), tested four
circus-horses for their musical ability and specifically for their
sense of musical time. He arrives at the conclusion that horses
"have no feeling for time, whatsoever." With but few
exceptions,[84, 85] all experts to-day are of the same opinion.
Horse-trainers, especially, are universally agreed on this point. It
is easy to see in any circus performance that it is not the horses
that accommodate themselves to the music, but that the music
accommodates itself to them, and that the trained horses[86] are
induced to do their artistic stepping only by the aids given by
their riders. Furthermore, all these horses are trained without the
use of music.----It would therefore appear that the time had arrived
when the tales of the dancing horses of the Sybarites ought no
longer to gain credence. Two Greek writers, Athenaeus[87] and
AElian,[88] tell us that the inhabitants of Sybaris, far-famed for
their luxurious habits, had trained their horses to dance to the
music of flutes during their banquets. Building upon this, the men
of Crotona, in one of their campaigns against the Sybarites, ordered
the flute-players to play the tunes familiar to the Sybarite horses.
Immediately the well-trained steeds began to dance, thus throwing
the whole Sybarite army into confusion, and the men of Crotona won
the day. (The same story is told in more detail concerning the
horses of the inhabitants of Cardia. Both accounts, somewhat mixed,
are to be found in Julius Africanus,[89] a writer of the third
century of the Christian era.)--In recent years a French veterinary
surgeon, Guenon,[90] experimented on the effect of music upon the
horses of the military. He entered their stalls, playing upon a
flute, and noted their behavior. Four-fifths of the animals, he
says, were deeply moved, yes, delighted, even, ("charmes." One
interpreter[91] calls it a case of hypnosis!). This emotional
excitement was expressed--somewhat unaesthetically--by the dropping
of excrementa. Guenon characterizes the feeling-state of these
animals as being a mixture of pleasure and astonishment, of
satisfaction and excitement ("melange de plaisir et d'etonnement, de
satisfaction et de trouble.") He also asserts that the horse's
musical taste is similar to our own. But I can find nothing in his
whole exposition which might