Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 August 1880 — Sagacious Horses. [ARTICLE]

Sagacious Horses.

Street car horses have apparently a very mondtoneous sort Of life. One day is so piuch like another, that like the human animal under ths same conditions, it would seem that their faculties would become deadened and the sligtest evidence of intelligence impossible. There is not much stimulus to mental activity in a life of plodding on a street car track, and Jet instances are known where horses avt taken a lively interest in the road the methods of carrying on the business and especially that portion of it which involves their time and labor. They have thought it all out and have actually been able to tell the number of trips assigned for their day’s labor, and when it ends. When a horse is able to tell how much work is required of him each day, and when his day ends,the achievement passes beyond the range ot mere animal instinct and attains the plane of reason and intelligence. Horse-cur drivers tell marvelous stories of the intelligence displayed by the animals under their charge. A driver on one of tne Fourteenth street cars is strongly of the opinion that bones know how to count. If this rather unusual statement is questioned, the driver simply says: “Well, if they don’t, how are you going to explain this*” and then he gees on to say that each car makes nineteen trips per day. There are four horses used, three making five trips and one four trips. At the end of each trip, the car is driven into the atebles and then turned upon the turning table. After the car is turned the hones are changed if it is the proper time, before the car starts back on tbe trip. The horses will make the tour trips, going iu and out of the stable without any difliculty. At the end of the fifth trip, if for&nv reason it la necessary to send the car back, it is almost

impossible to get the horse out of the stable. He holds back, resists, and it requires the united exertions of several men before the animal can be induced to move. The horse has kept a strict count of the trips and knows that he has finished his day’s work, and ought to go to his stall. The same thing occurs if the attempt is made to make the horse that has only tour trips take an additional one. With the drivers and stable men, who frequent, ly witness such exhibitions, there is a firm belief in the mathematical ability of horses. The street-car men also tell an interesting yarn about the hill horse that works on the hill between New York avenue and H street. His time for stopping work is very irregular, and he is sometimes taken to the stables with one' car and sometimes with another. But the horse knows perfectly well when it is the intention to take him to the stable, and when he comes to the top of the hill, instead of stopping, he starts off on a run. If the time fcr his going home was at all regular this singular intelligence might be explained, but whether it is early or late, the horse knows when he is going home. Until that time he plods along steadily and has never been known to make a mistake. One oi the drivers explains it by the tact that the boy who has the horse in charge usually sits on the dash board, with feet on the outside, while going up the hill. But when the boy is going all the way to the stables he gets all the way' in from the front platform. The horse sees that the boy has drawn his legs in instead of dangling them on the outside, and, by the inductive process of reasoning, he concludes that it is time to go home. He accordingly goes. Another horse always shies when he passes a certain corner after dark, because some four or five years ago he was fl tightened at that place,—JFaak* inptoa (!>.&.)-Pori-