8o THE HORSE OF MR. VON OSTEN 



instances he selected an orange-colored cloth, four times 

 a blue, three times a white one. 



The fact that the errors were equally distributed over 

 the tests with the colored cloths and those with the 

 placards is strong evidence that the horse's response 

 involved no intellectual process, for if that were the case, 

 then the responses in the tests with the placards would 

 have been very much more difficult, for they would have 

 involved the ability to read, whereas the tests with the 

 colored cloths demanded only that a few names be 

 remembered. Nevertheless, the horse was as unsuccess- 

 ful in tests of one kind as he was in those of the other, 

 — even when Mr. von Osten acted as questioner. (50% 

 failures in 78 placard tests; 46% failures in 103 color 

 tests.) 



The fact that commands which were purposely 

 enunciated poorly, or else not spoken at all, were executed 

 with just as much accuracy as those given aloud, 

 strengthened us in our supposition. On one occasion 

 I placed a blank placard with the others. When I 

 ordered him to approach tabula rasa, he invariably 

 went to the right one. The following illustrates how he 

 fulfilled quite nonsensical commands. A series of blue 

 and green cloths lay upon the ground. Being asked 

 where the black, the orange, and the yellow cloths lay, 

 Hans shook his head energetically, i. e. they were not 

 there. And yet, upon being asked to bring them in the 

 order named, he regularly brought one of the blue ones. 



All this goes to show that Hans did not know the 

 names of the colors (to say nothing of the symbols on the 

 placards). It was plain that here also, as in all the 

 other cases, he was controlled by signs made by the 

 questioner, the nature of which I soon discovered. Stand- 



