In spelling, Hans was quite indifferent whether his table with the eighty-four number signs upon it stood before him, for he had no knowledge of letters. Neither Mr. von Osten nor Mr. Schillings required it, for the former knew the table by heart and Mr. Schillings told me that before every test he made a note of the numbers which were necessary to indicate the required letters, trusting in this way to control the responses of the horse and never guessing that by so doing he was making it possible for the horse to answer correctly. The newspaper reports aroused much interest at the time by stating that Hans was able to spell such proper names as "Plueskow" and "Bethmann-Hollweg", even to putting in the difficult "w" and "th". The friends of Mr. von Osten at the same time called attention to the exquisite auditory acuteness of the horse which enabled him to perceive the aspirated "w" and to discriminate between the "th" and "t", (the "th" is softer than the "t" in German.--_Translator_). This explanation, of course, must have appeared somewhat daring even at that time. Hans was quite guiltless of the many limitations imputed to him concerning his knowledge of symbols. That he was unable to read capitals or Latin script was merely a vagary of the master, like the belief that it was necessary to confine one's self in one's questions to a certain vocabulary and to a certain form. Mr. von Osten's apparent failure to elicit responses from the horse on topics of which it was ignorant is a beautiful illustration of the power of imagination. Mr. von Osten was convinced from the very first that Hans could not answer such questions. When the belief in success was lacking, of course there was not the requisite amount of concentration which, alone, leads to perceptible expressive movements and thus elicits a successful reaction on the part of the horse.