BEHAVIOR OF VERTEBRATES 447 



Gobius show at first, as do the fish in Bauer's experiment, an 

 aversion to the red, lef using to pass through the red passage- 

 way which they traversed freely while the bottom was sanded. 

 After one hour, however, they make no disci imination. With 

 Gasterosteus red was always "chosen" in preference to any other 

 color; yellow, green and blue followed in order. Instead of 

 indicating, as Mile. Goldsmith claims, ability to distinguish 

 colors, it would seem that the basis of discrimination is that 

 of brightness difference, as has previously been pointed out by 

 Hess. 



2. Food was given from different colored forceps. The fish 

 returned to the food-carrying forceps (the red) except when 

 they were exactly transposed with the empty blue forceps. 

 Then they came to the place where the red had been. The 

 conclusion of Mile. Goldsmith is that they have a memory for 

 colors, as well as for position. The former is feeble and when 

 memory of color and position conflict, the memory of place 

 prevails. 



The author found that the young of Pleuronectes were quite 

 "curious" as to new objects. She accordingly took a record of 

 the time necessary so to accustom them to a new object that they 

 no longer noticed it. The time was not kept with exactness. 

 Indeed, all through the experiment there is a deplorable lack 

 of technique. Memory of color is claimed to have endured 

 twenty-eight days, i.e., twenty-eight days after having received 

 food from the red forceps, one individual went directly to them 

 on immersion of the red and blue forceps. 



M. Pieron, in a discussion of the work of Mile. Goldsmith, 

 shows that "numerical precision" should have been sought as 

 to the rapidity of the vanishing of the mnemonic trace, and 

 also calls attention to the necessity of excluding from color 

 experiments the luminosity variant. The lack of careful stand- 

 ardization of experimental conditions deprives the author's 

 results of the value they otherwise might have. The paper 

 deals as much with the formation and retention of habits as 

 with vision proper. 



Birds. Breed (2) shows that chicks in advance of any train- 

 ing respond positively to the more intense of two non-chro- 

 matic light stimuli. A similar result was not found in the case 

 of chromatic light stimuli. Breed holds that this points to one 



