INSTINCT AND MEMORY OF 7 HE HORSE 277 



protecting his master from danger witness the fol- 

 lowing " Instance of Docility ! " 



' A farmer was remarkable for two qualities- 

 attachment to animals and getting tipsy. The horse 

 he usually rode, or rather the one that usually walked 

 by his side like a dog for he seldom rode him had 

 been brought up by him from a foal. Once every 

 week the owner went to a market some seven or 

 eight miles distant from his home, and as invariably 

 came home the worse for liquor, his potations in such 

 cases being usually varied by sundry slumbers in the 

 middle of the road. The horse was always bj r his 

 side, and if any one approached, a warning neigh 

 gave notice to be wary ; no accident to the master 

 ever occurred. 



' One night a farmer of the neighbourhood was 

 coming home, when the well-known neigh informed 

 him that J - was asleep in the mud. Determined 

 to test the sagacity of the horse, he removed the 

 tipsy man from the middle of the road to the close 

 vicinity of a ditch half-filled with water, placing him 

 in a position so that he nearly touched the water. 

 He then remounted his own horse, rode onwards a 

 short distance, when he tied his horse to a gate and 

 returned to watch the result, which he found to be 

 that the intoxicated man was lying far from the ditch 

 where he had left him ; having had his coat torn by 

 the teeth of his own horse when dragging him out of 

 danger of drowning. The tipsy farmer's horse, which 



