SENSE OF TIME 



WE often hear that dogs whose masters lead a 

 very regular life get to know the time and 

 the hours of the day's routine such as walks 

 and meals showing this by their behaviour. It might 

 be easy to account for their intimate acquaintance 

 with the hours of meals, since their stomach is practi- 

 cally their clock. But that a dog should know to a 

 " tic " the time for his master's departure from the 

 house whatever the season of the year, tugging him 

 by his coat should he not be ready, or fetching his stick 

 allows of no other explanation than that of a canine 

 sense of time. 



This consideration led me to try and teach Lola our 

 divisions of time on the clock in order to make my 

 experiment in this direction. I took a clock on which 

 the figures were inscribed in Arabic, and of which the 

 dial measuring 5 centimetres across (2 inches), was 

 sufficiently plain to read. I then explained to her 

 that a day and a night were divided into 24 parts : 

 I said to her : " The day-time is light, and people 

 can then go about, and eat and work ; at night it is 

 dark, and people and animals sleep do you under- 

 stand me ? " She replied : " Yes ! " (two raps). 

 I said : " Into how many parts are the day and night 

 divided ? " and she answered : "24," " These por- 

 tions," I continued, " are called hours, and one hour 

 is again divided into sixty parts, and these are called 

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