140 Animal Intelligence 



easily be determined in any case. The only case of total 

 loss of the association (No. i in C) is so exceptional that I 

 fancy something other than lapse of time was its cause. 

 The main interest of these data, considered as quantitative 

 estimates, is not psychological, but biological. They show 

 what a tremendous advantage the well-developed associa- 

 tion-process is to an animal. The ways to different feeding 

 grounds, the actions of enemies, the appearance of noxious 

 foods, are all connected permanently with the proper re- 

 action by a few experiences which need be reenforced only 

 very rarely. Of course, associations without any perma- 

 nence would be useless, but the usefulness increases im- 

 mensely with such a degree of permanence as these results 

 witness. An interesting experiment from the biological 

 point of view would be to see how infrequently an experience 

 could occur and yet lead eventually to a perfect association. 

 An experiment approximating this is recorded in the time- 

 curves for Box H in Figure 7, on page 47. Three trials at a 

 time were given, the trials being two or three days apart. 

 As may be seen from the curves, the association was readily 

 formed. 



The chief psychological interest of these data is that they 

 show that permanence of associations is not memory. The 

 fact that a cat, when after an interval she is put into box G, 

 proceeds to immediately press the thumb piece and push 

 the door, does not at all mean that the cat feels the box 

 to be the same from which she weeks ago freed herself by 

 pushing down that thumb piece, or thinks about ever 

 having felt or done anything in that box. She does not 

 refer the present situation to a situation of the past and real- 

 ize that it is the same, but simply feels on being confronted 

 with that situation the same impulse which she felt before. 

 She does the thing now for just the same reason that she 



