Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/175

Rh number which should be carried, King moved up to the rack, and apparently went directly to the right number, and pushed it off.

So he went through with the entire addition, making no mistakes, except that for most of the numbers he pushed off both the right one and the one next to it. The trainer in each case would take two or three steps toward him and say, "He knows perfectly well what is right, but he is mischievous to-day. Sometimes he does that, but very rarely." Then the trainer would call out to the horse, "King, if you do not behave yourself, I will whip you for it. Now you go and do as I command you." The effect of these remarks on the observers was evident; they were siding with the horse in all his "pranks," though he appeared to be in earnest, according to equine standards. The writer could detect no evidence of "mischief" in the horse's expression or action. But the observers showed sympathy with King, and delight in his evident intelligence. The writer, who did not participate in the demonstrations of admiration when King pushed off the numbers, was said by certain of the observers to be rather cold and blase in regard to "educated" horses. One newspaper reporter who was in the audience told the writer later that he thought King would have done much better than he actually did do, if he (the writer) had not been eyeing him so coldly and unsympathetically. "I couldn't have done so well myself under such conditions," said the reporter.

The writer next wrote on the board the figures

and said to the horse, "King, subtract." The trainer then called to him to perform the process, using, so far as one could follow him, substantially such language as he did during the addition process. The horse in this experiment always pushed off the right number, but he also pushed off one or two other numbers in each instance. He would stop in the vicinity of the right number, while his trainer was talking to him, but apparently he could not discriminate between the correct one and those on either side of it. The trainer kept telling the audience that King knew perfectly well what was right, but he was "out of sorts to-day." So far as one could tell, the horse was utterly indifferent to his repeated verbal chastisements, even though, according to the trainer, he comprehended everything said to him and about him.

Next, the writer put on the board a problem in division, and one in multiplication, and the horse solved each problem in the way in which he did the first two; but in most of his attempts he pushed off more than one number, which the trainer uniformly ascribed to the cold weather, or to some similar cause, and not to lack of intelligence. His most remarkable arithmetical work, judging from the expressions of the