CHAPTER IV. THE ELBERFELD HORSES
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I will first sum up as briefly as possible, for who so may still
be ignorant of them, the facts which it is necessary to know if
one would fully understand the marvelous story of the Elberfeld
horses. For a detailed account, I can refer him to Herr Karl
Krall's remarkable work, Denkende Tiere (Leipsig, 1912), which is
the first and principal source of information amid a bibliography
that is already assuming considerable dimensions.
Some twenty years ago there lived in Berlin an old misanthrope
named Wilhelm von Osten. He was a man with a small private
income, a little eccentric in his ways and obsessed by one idea,
the intelligence of animals. He began by undertaking the
education of a horse that gave him no very definite results. But,
in 1900, he became the owner of a Russian stallion who, under the
name of Hans, to which was soon added the Homeric and well-earned
prefix of Kluge, or Clever, was destined to upset all our notions
of animal psychology and to raise questions that rank among the
most unexpected and the most absorbing problems which man has yet
encountered.
Thanks to Von Osten, whose patience, contrary to what one might
think, was in no wise angelic but resembled rather a frenzied
obstinacy, the horse made rapid and extraordinary progress.
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