EXPLANATION OF OBSERVATIONS 197 



since he had had musical training, he was aware of what 

 the numbers should be, even when he could not see the 

 stoppers of the harmonica, and, therefore, we readily un- 

 derstand why it was that the horse responded so wonder- 

 fully in his case. 



The so-called musical ability of horses appears, from 

 all that is known, to be confined within very narrow 

 bounds. Only one fact is universally accepted, viz., 

 horses of the military are believed to possess a knowl- 

 edge of the significance of trumpet signals, and are often 

 _said to interpret them more readily than the recruits.^^ 

 Since no experiments had been made along these lines, I 

 undertook to make a brief test of the cavalry horses men- 

 tioned on page 188. As in the preceding tests, the three 

 animals were arranged behind one another with the cus- 

 tomary distance of two horses' lengths between, and each 

 was ridden by hia accustomed -rider. _ They were held by 

 the reins, but received no aid of any kind, either to start 

 them or to restrain them. A bugle then sounded the vari- 

 ous signals at the other end of the barrack's courtyard. 

 We had been previously assured that the horses would 

 certainly react without fail. But, as a matter of fact, the 

 result was quite the contrary. Two of the horses did not 

 move at all, and the third, a thirteen-year old gelding, was 

 startled nearly every time and would tear off in a gallop — 

 even though a trot had been sounded. I would not, 

 however, venture to draw any conclusions from results 

 such as these. Many more tests would have to be made, 

 and some of them upon the whole squadron, before a 

 judgment could be given.* 



* Frofessor Fliigel,"' basing his statements on an article appearing in 

 " Schorer's Familienblatt " (Beriin, 1890, No. 8, p. 128), gives an account 

 of similar experiments which were supposed to have been conducted by 



