90 LOLA 



In May, 1916, Lola learnt the big multiplication- 

 table, doing so easily and quickly. She was at first 

 slightly inaccurate in the higher numbers, for rapping 

 out the " hundreds " with the right paw and the " tens " 

 with the left and then again the " ones " with 

 the right gave her some trouble in the beginning. 

 Yet such questions as : 3 + 14, 2 + 17, 4 -f 20, 

 were given without hesitation, since these did not 

 come within the region of the hundreds. But in time 

 she got used to the hundreds too and even to 

 thousands, and to these latter she applied her left paw, 

 rapping the date 1916 thus : left paw I ; right paw 9 ; 

 left paw i ; right paw 6. 



Towards the end of May I thought I would teach her 

 fractions, and she apparently understood what I meant, 

 but for a beginning I could only put questions, such as : 

 " How many wholes are there in ~, ^, or ~ ? " etc. 

 Indeed, I was at first at a loss as to what form of expres- 

 sion I should use here so as not to come into collision 

 with those already resorted to, thus giving rise to con- 

 fusion. At first I thought it might be more convenient 

 to let her rap out the denominator with her right paw 

 and the numerator with her left but I soon came to 

 see that even with T 8 ^, this method could no longer 

 be maintained. At length I let her simply rap out 

 the numerator then I would ask for the denominator, 

 and let her rap this, so that in the case of ^ she rapped 

 the 3 first with her right paw ; then gave the denomin- 

 ator, i.e. i rap with her left paw and 6 again with her 

 right. This mode or procedure came quite naturally 

 to her, and so it was retained. The questions were 

 practised in the following manner : " How do you 

 ra P t ^f ? " etc -> an d I followed this up with easy 

 exercises such as : " How much is $ -f ? " the 

 simplified answer being " |." I had, as may be 



