ANIMAL TRAINING AND INTELLIGENCE 



special training. It seems to me better than the 

 often-observed behavior of riderless troop-horses, 

 which join their squadron, or even another, and 

 perform all the evolutions at command of the 

 bugle as though guided by a rider. Here their 

 naturally gregarious tendencies are only confirmed 

 and regulated by discipline, for they are acting in 

 concert with a great number of fellows. 



The performing horses of the circus never fail 

 to win admiration ; and the training of what are 

 called waltzing horses appears to have greatly im- 

 proved of late. Still, that must have been a very 

 striking programme carried out before Louis XIII, 

 where horses danced upon their hind legs to the 

 music ; but here again, as in the case of elephants, 

 it was the musicians who kept time with the horses, 

 and not the horses with the playing. 



The horse has often been named by enthusiastic 

 lovers of this noble-hearted friend and servant of 

 mankind the most intelligent of animals. Natu- 

 ralists deny this. They assert that in some facul- 

 ties, as memory, his brain is marvellously endowed. 

 He is kind in disposition, grateful and quick to re- 

 spond to what he understands ; but in a wild state 

 he shows little intellect, and outside of a very limited 

 range of ideas is dense and slow. No animal is 

 more liable to fits of unreasoning panic, when he 

 forgets the lessons of a lifetime, and will dash 

 headlong against a stone wall or over a precipice 

 without a thought of where he is going. 



