256 THE WONDER OF LIFE 



its questioner very attentively and took note of ordinarily 

 imperceptible and unconscious movements of the head and 

 body which indicated when he should stop stamping. It 

 was very clever of the horse to utilize the unconscious signals, 

 but it was not arithmetic. Pfungst declared that ' Clever 

 Hans ' could not read figures or words, as was alleged, that 

 he could not spell, or count, or perform arithmetical 

 operations, and that even his memory was poor. It only 

 remained to say that he was a very well-meaning and an 

 uncommonly attentive horse. ' Clever Hans ', rather shorn 

 of his glory, passed into the hands of Herr Krall, a well-to-do 

 merchant in Elberfeld, who took precautions (e.g. by 

 using blinders) to keep him from receiving any visual 

 signals during the experiments, and was still able to get 

 correct answers. With increasing age, however, ' Hans ' 

 became tired of ' arithmetic ', and would obstinately 

 refuse to do any more of whatever it was that he had 

 done. Convinced that the critics were missing part 

 of the truth, Krall started afresh with two young Arab 

 horses Muhamed and Zarif of two and two and a half 

 years respectively, which previous experience with ' Hans ' 

 enabled him to train in a more effective way. 



Krall accustomed his horses to the appearance of letters, 

 figures, words, and the like, which were hung up in their 

 * schoolroom ' ; he taught them for one to two hours a 

 day ; he carefully avoided routine ; he used ' blinders ' to 

 eliminate unconscious visual hints, and made an improved 

 sounding-board for stamping the answers on. He taught his 

 pupils to indicate units with the right foot, tens with the 

 left, hundreds with the right, so that 126, which meant 126 

 stamps for Hans, involved only 9 for Muhamed and Zarif. 

 ' Nothing ', ' no ', ' not ' and ' none ' were indicated by 



