12 MENTAL QUALITIES OF THE HORSE. 



after making a stumble, and thus betray the fact that they 

 are old offenders in this respect. Their alarm is evidently 

 due to the remembrance that punishment follows the 

 making of a false step ; but they have not intelligence 

 enough to understand that the former was the penalty of 

 the latter ; for in no case which I have seen, does the 

 infliction of such chastisement render the horse less liable to 

 stumble. I have often remarked among racehorses which I 

 have been training, that plaiting the mane previous to a 

 race made some of the old ones so excited, that they 

 would refuse to eat after their mane had been arranged 

 in strands. They evidently connected the idea of racing 

 with this portion of their toilet. We shall see further on 

 how to induce the horse to make the required mental 

 connection, and even to teach him, for our own ends, how to 

 draw wrong conclusions as to cause and effect. 



I have been unable to trace any indication of reasoning- 

 power in the horse, whose highest displays of intelligence 

 seem (to me, at least) to be the outcome of tentative or 

 accidental experience. He, like many human beings, 

 appears to lack the ability of acquiring new knowledge by 

 drawing conclusions from that which he already possesses. 

 If I am correct in this statement, association of ideas is, 

 therefore, the only means by which we are able to teach 

 him. Respecting the brain power of apes, Frank Buckland 

 says : " No monkey of any species, where the experiment 

 has been tried, would even put a stick or coal on to an' 

 expiring fire ; he would sit down and shiver by the fire till 

 it goes out. His mind is not sufficiently acute to see the 

 connection between cause and effect, so as to put coal oni 



