Is it possible to believe that the horses really do what they appear to do? Is there no precedent for the marvel? Is there no transition between the Elberfeld stallions and the horses which we have known until this day? It is not easy to answer these questions, for it is only since yesterday that the intellectual powers of our defenseless brothers have been subjected to strictly scientific experiments. We have, it is true more than one collection of anecdotes in which the intelligence of animals is lauded to the skies; but we cannot rely upon these ill-authenticated stories. To find genuine and incontestable instances we must have recourse to the works, rare as yet, of scientific men who have made a special study of the subject. M. Hachet-Souplet, for example, the director of the Institut de Psychologie Zoologique, mentions the case of a dog who learnt to acquire an abstract idea of weight. You put in front of him eight rounded and polished stones, all of exactly the same size and shape, but of different weights. You tell him to fetch the heaviest or the lightest; he judges their weight by lifting them and, without mistake, picks out the one required. The same writer also tells the story of a parrot to whom he had taught the word "cupboard" by showing him a little box that could be hung up on the wall at different heights and in which his daily allowance of food was always ostentatiously put away; "I next taught him the names of a number of objects," says M. Hachet-Souplet, "by holding them out to him. Among them was a ladder; and I prevailed upon the bird to say, 'Climb,' each time that he saw me mount the steps. One morning, when the parrot's cage was brought into the laboratory, the cupboard was hanging near the ceiling, while the little ladder was stowed away in a corner among other objects familiar to the bird. Now the parrot, every day, when I opened the cupboard, used to scream, 'Cupboard! Cupboard! Cupboard!' with all his might. My problem was, therefore, this: seeing that the cupboard was out of my reach and that, therefore, I could not take his food out of it; knowing, on the other hand, that I was able to raise myself above the level of the floor by climbing the ladder; and having the words 'climb' and 'ladder' at his disposal: would he employ them to suggest to me the idea of using them in order to reach the cupboard? Greatly excited, the parrot flapped his wings, bit the bars of his cage, and screamed: "'Cupboard! Cupboard! Cupboard!'" "And I got no more out of him that day. The next day, the bird, having received nothing but millet, for which he did not much care, instead of the hemp-seed contained in the cupboard, was in paroxysms of anger; and, after he had made numberless attempts to force open his bars, his attention was at last caught by the ladder and he said: "'Ladder, climb, cupboard!'"