FORMATION OF HABITS IN THE TURTLE. 523 



turned to the starting-point, as if to get its bearings, and started out 

 afresh. In every case the second attempt resulted in a direct and un- 

 usually quick journey to the nest. Very frequently halts just in front 

 of the holes were noticed. It looked as if the animal were meditating 

 upon the course to be taken. Had one seen a man in a similar situation 

 he would unhesitatingly have said that the person was trying to decide 

 which way to go. There can be little doubt, however, that the mental 

 attitude of the turtle was extremely simple compared with a man's 

 under similar conditions. There are those who would claim that even 

 the turtle was thinking about its environmental conditions, but it seems 

 far more probable that it stopped in order the better to get those 

 sensory data by which it was enabled to follow its former course. Smell 

 and sight furnish the most important elements in the associative 

 processes of lower animals. This interpretation of the action is sup- 



Fig. 5. Course for Fifth Trip. 



Fig. 6. Course for Thirtieth Trip. 



ported by the fact that it occurred most frequently after the course had 

 been gone over a few times. 



A more complex and novel labyrinth was now substituted. Its 

 new features were a blind alley (see F, Fig. 4) and three inclined 

 planes (3, 4 and 6 of Fig. 4). A plan of the labyrinth is shown 

 in Fig. 4. At the left of the nest a side view of the inclines 

 3 and 4 is shown. Each was one foot long, and the middle point 

 (M) was four inches from the floor. 



Labyrinth No. 2 was used in the same way as No. 1, the turtle being 

 placed in A and permitted to seek the nest, which was this time a box 

 filled with moist sand. The inclines at first baffled the little fellow, and 

 it was an hour and thirty-one minutes before he reached the nest. A 

 and B seemed to offer no difficulties, but the new features — the blind 

 alley and the inclines — were puzzles. By the fifth trial, however, these 

 had become somewhat familiar. The route taken in this experiment 

 has been produced in Fig. 5. 



