260 THE WONDER OF LIFE 



this view. (1) The horse is a very intelligent creature ; it 

 has a remarkably fine brain. Perhaps KralFs pupils are 

 being led by him to cultivate fallow areas in their 

 unusually rich cerebral estate. (2) The analogy of calcu- 

 lating boys is suggestive, for some of these have been very 

 backward in other respects, unable to read or write, 

 unaware of conventional methods of arithmetic, and so on. 

 Professor von Buttel-Reepen cites the case of the Italian 

 peasant-boy who extracted the cube-root of 3,796,416 

 in 30 seconds, and many instances are well known. (3) 

 There may be some useful hint in the observation which 

 several visitors have made, that the answers which are 

 stamped out quickly and energetically are usually right. 

 (4) Numerous mistakes are made, especially when the 

 pupil is cross or distracted. It is of interest to notice, 

 what Professor Plate and others have pointed out, that 

 the number of mistakes increases with the difficulty of the 

 sums. There was often a curious intelligibility in the 

 mistakes, though an expert arithmetician has pointed 

 out that the nature of the mistakes tells against the theory 

 that real calculation is going on. That the horses are able 

 to correct their mistakes is also of interest. Similarly, 

 it is interesting that different experts who visited the 

 horses got very unequal exhibitions of skill, or whatever 

 it may be, and that the horses have refractory periods 

 when they won't learn or won't show off. The fact that 

 ' Clever Hans ' has lost all interest in figures, finds its 

 analogy in the case of Richard Whately, whose gifts as a 

 calculating boy were quite replaced by others by the time 

 he became Archbishop of Dublin. 



What is to be said on the other side ? Many have pro- 

 claimed their opinion that there must be some trickery some- 



