The Horse's Mind 211 



Trixie was a filly of three weeks old she was allowed 

 to run in and out of her master's house in America 

 like a dog, and was the constant companion and 

 playmate of his children; in fact, her early life ran 

 along the same pleasant lines as that of her Arab 

 ancestors. She was twelve years old in 1907, and 

 had not completed her education until two years 

 previously. 



Mr. Barnes first conceived the idea of teaching her 

 to spell from his children. They had four alphabet 

 letters printed on large blocks, and the filly learned 

 to pick up whichever was called for. Inspired by the 

 Kindergarten system, after ceaseless effort and un- 

 wearying patience Mr. Barnes taught her to spell al- 

 most any word by syllables, showing that she really 

 associated the sound of the word with the letters 

 that form it. This was proved by her occasional 

 lapses into very phonetic or Rooseveltian spelling. 



She then learnt the result of every simple com- 

 bination of multiplication, division, addition, and 

 subtraction up to the numeral nine. Space does not 

 admit of going fully into Mr. Barnes's method of 

 instruction in arithmetic, but he gave me to under- 

 stand that it was briefly as follows. He would call 



