EXPERIMENTS AND OBSERVATIONS 35 



a series of cards on which numerals were blazoned, were 

 exposed to the horse's view in such a way that none of 

 those present was able to see them, and the horse was 

 asked to tap the numbers as they were shown. This ex- 

 periment was repeated at different times and in all there 

 were 49 tests in which procedure was without knowledge, 

 and 42 in which procedure was with knowledge. In the 

 case of the former there were 8% correct responses, 

 whereas in the case of the latter 98% of the answers were 

 right. As an example of the course which the series 

 tended to take, we insert the following, in which Mr. von 

 Osten himself acted as questioner. 



Whenever the questioner knew the solution, nearly all 

 of the horse's answers were correct; but when the an- 

 swers were unknown to the questioner, the horse's re- 

 sponses were, with only a few exceptions, quite unsuc- 

 cessful. Since the few exceptional cases must be re- 

 garded as fortuitous, the conclusion is warranted that the 

 horse was unable to read numerals without assistance. 



In order to discover whether the horse could read 

 words such as "Hans" or "Stall" or the names 

 of colors, they were written upon placards and hung 



