6 MENTAL QUALITIES OF THE HORSE. 



learning by experience. The study of animal life leads us 

 to the conclusion, I venture to think, that animals are 

 able to associate in their minds only concrete ideas ; and 

 that the association of abstract ideas is confined to man- 

 kind. Perhaps a more correct division of memory would 

 be : memory of facts, and memory of chains of reasoning. 

 Even fish possess good concrete memory. If we make a 

 practice of feeding fish which are kept in a pond, these 

 animals of low nervous development will quickly learn to 

 connect the impression which our appearance makes on 

 them, with the idea of food, and, on seeing us, will hasten 

 to place themselves in position to receive our gifts. In 

 fact, the fish will remember us ; and, furthermore, if we 

 select a particular hour of the day at which to feed them, 

 they will apparently bear it in mind. Although many men 

 of great intellectual capacity possess extraordinary good 

 fact-memory ; we find this faculty equally well developed 

 among persons of feeble mental grasp, and sometimes even 

 among idiots. Horses have extremely good fact-memories, 

 and, as remarked by Dr. Le Bon, would win all the com- 

 petitive examinations if they were able to talk and write. 

 On the other hand, there are many men who have great 

 power of keeping in remembrance long and complicated 

 problems, but are singularly deficient in fact-memory. 



The vividness with which an event is retained in the 

 memory of man or beast depends on the intensity of the 

 impression, or repetition, or on both. Without intensity, 

 repetition has but little effect in fixing an impression on 

 the mind. For example, lessons which we have conned 

 over, perhaps, hundreds of times during our school days, 

 are often completely forgotten long before our hair turns 

 grey ; and yet some painful accident in our eaily child- 

 hood may remain permanently vivid in our remembrance. 

 The ordinary system of horse-breaking, by which repetition 



