240 CAPACITY FOE EDUCATION. 



3. The instruction of all classes of performing animals. 



4. Horse and dog training. 



In the training of animals destined for any of the 

 * learned professions ' the professions that subserve the 

 purposes of human exhibitors the first procedure (and a 

 most important preliminary it is) is to test the mental capa- 

 city, the disposition or character, of various individuals of a 

 species, selecting those which promise to learn quickly and 

 become submissive readily. 



Both in the human child and in other animals man's first 

 efforts at education are necessarily experimental or tentative, 

 his object, and the result, being to distinguish those indi- 

 viduals who can from those who cannot be educated, those 

 who will repay his continued efforts from those on whom they 

 would be wasted. Thus, in selecting horses for circus pur- 

 poses, Franconi, Astley, Ducrow, Cooke, and other circus pro- 

 prietors have found, to their cost, that out of many trials only 

 a few animals are sufficiently intelligent for their purposes. 

 And the same has also been the case with the trainers of 

 other ' performing ' animals. 



The teacher must even be guided by the mood or humour 

 of his animal pupils for the moment. Song birds are fre- 

 quently * not in song' not in a humour for it, just as the 

 talking parrot is often least disposed to exhibit his gift when 

 it is most desirable or desired that he should exhibit it. 



In the next place man's training cannot begin too early : 

 his pupils cannot be too young. ' Learn young, learn fair ' 

 is as applicable to other animals as to man. Another even 

 more apposite proverb reminds us that we cannot ( teach an 

 old dog new tricks.' Education, to be thoroughly successful 

 to give pupil and teacher equally fair play, to enable the 

 latter to develope the best features of character in the former 

 must begin in youth, during the impressionable stage of 

 existence, before counteracting habits have been acquired or 

 antagonistic experience gained. Thus the simple secret of 

 taming and training wild animals as companions to children 

 is to catch them very young in their infantile stage and to 

 bring them tip along with the children by the same process 

 of education a combination of kindness with firmness. 



