162 ANIMALS' ILLUSIONS 



condition. A coachman, who for many years had been 

 in charge of a large stable of valuable carriage-horses, 

 gave the writer some curious instances of the nervous 

 illusions of horses. Once only did he find a whole stable 

 in anything like permanent fear. He had taken ten 

 carriage-horses to a large house in Norfolk, where they 

 stood in a line in a ten-stalled stable. There was a 

 tame monkey in the stable, very quiet, which slept 

 unchained, sitting on one of the divisions of the stalls. 

 On the first night, about eleven o'clock, he heard a 

 disturbance in the stable, the horses stamping and kick- 

 ing, and very uneasy. He got a light, entered the 

 stable, and found them all ' in a muck sweat.' Nothing 

 which could disturb them was there except the monkey, 

 apparently asleep on its perch. He quieted the horses, 

 locked the door, and went away. Soon the disturbance 

 began again, and this time, slipping quietly up, he drew 

 a pair of steps to one of the windows, and, as the moon 

 was shining bright, had a view of the interior. The 

 monkey was the source of terror. It was amusing itself 

 by a steeplechase along the whole length of the stable, 

 leaping alternately from the division of the stall to a 

 horse's back or head, then off on to the next rail, and so 

 on. The horses were trembling with fright, though 

 many of them had not the least objection to a cat or a 

 pigeon sitting on their backs. Yet the monkey had not 

 hurt any of them, and their panic was clearly the result 



