THE HORSE. 429 



When not a distant taper's twinkling ray 

 Gleamed o'er the furze to light him on his way ; 

 When not a sheep-bell soothed his listening ear, 

 And the big rain drops told the tempest near; 

 Then did his horse the homeward track descry, 

 The track that shunned his sad, inquiring eye." 



(Pleasures of Memory, Part I.) 



What the phrenologists call the organ of time, or the faculty of 

 recollecting intervals of time, appears to exist in the horse. 

 The author of the Menageries says he has witnessed the following 

 instance of the kind in a horse which he knew. " The horse, 

 being used to carry, once a week, the newsman of a provincial 

 paper, the animal always stopped at the houses of the several 

 customers, although they were sixty or seventy in number. 

 But there were two persons on the route who took one paper 

 between them, and each claimed the privilege of having it first 

 on the alternate Sunday. The horse soon became accustomed 

 to this regulation j and, although the parties lived two miles 

 distant, he stopped once a fortnight at the door of the customer 

 at Thorpe, and once a fortnight at that of the other customer 

 at Chertsey, and never forgot this arrangement, which lasted 

 several years, or stopped unnecessarily, when he once thoroughly 

 understood the rule" (vol. i. p. 56). Like the dog, the horse 

 often becomes irretrievably attached to habits and manners 

 to which it has been long accustomed. Miss Mitford relates 

 that a gentleman having admired the fast trotting of a butcher's 

 horse, purchased it at the high price of seventy guineas, but 

 though he tried for weeks to make it go at a butcher's pace, 

 it would not exceed an ordinary amble. Suspecting an impo- 

 sition he took the horse back, and complained to the butcher, 

 who observed in reply, " Why, he will trot just as fast with 

 you as he did with me, but you must carry a basket" The 

 German horses slacken their pace immediately that they per- 

 ceive the tobacco sparks which fly from the pipe of their driver, 

 when he is trimming it. This conduct on their part has been 

 ascribed to sagacity ; but is doubtless the result of passive 

 experience, by which they have found that when the sparks fly 



