THE WAYS OF LIFE 255 



nected with the education of higher animals which suggest 

 that we have swung to the extreme of crediting animals 

 with too little mental capacity. 



Every one knows that much can be achieved by the 

 patient training and persuasion of big-brained higher 

 animals, such as those which we have named, but no 

 one yet knows how much. Elephants make very clever 

 workers and the educability of army horses or of shepherds' 

 dogs is astonishing. When the late Lord Avebury asked 

 his dog Van if it wanted to go for a walk, it used to run to 

 its box of printed cards and fetch the one with OUT on 

 it. It would bring other cards, such as BONE or TEA, when 

 it was invited to enjoy these luxuries. The same sort of 

 associative power was even more developed in Dr. Romanes's 

 chimpanzee, ' Sally ', who would hand you three straws, 

 or four straws, and so on, as you asked her. To save time, 

 she used sometimes to double one of the straws and present 

 the two ends between her fingers and thumb, making 

 three straws do duty for four. And it was an interesting 

 fact that when she was refused a reward in such cases, 

 she used to straighten out the bent straw and make the 

 number right by picking up another. This appreciation of 

 numbers is very interesting, but it is mere child's play 

 compared with the arithmetical powers that many hard- 

 headed naturalists have recently felt compelled to recognize 

 in the ' thinking horses ' of Elberfeld. 



The story of the so-called ' thinking horses ' begins 

 with ' Clever Hans ', who was taught by Herr Von Osten 

 to give, by stamping, the answers to a long and varied list 

 of arithmetical questions. The case was carefully investi- 

 gated in the Psychological Laboratory of the University of 

 Berlin, and the general verdict was that the horse observed 



