162 L. W. COLE 



what may not become of the credibility, temporarily and with 

 qualifications, accorded me ? But what disposition, pray, will 

 then be made of the behavior of Hunter's rats ? With many 

 misgivings, therefore, I await the report of experiments which 

 may even now be in progress. 



In instinctive behavior the Chicago raccoons confirmed my 

 observations rather than those of Davis. Yet I am sure Davis's 

 report is correct, despite the authorities quoted against him, 

 for I saw occasional cases of what he observed regularly. We 

 must not be too cocksure in these matters. Remember that 

 Audubon never saw his pet raccoon wash its food in the water 

 beside it (Davis p. 45 1 ) . 4 Yet that behavior gives to the raccoon 

 both the name "lotor," and the name "Waschbar". 5 



Interpretations: The reader who is familiar with Dr. Hunter's 

 thesis will recognize the agreements I have mentioned between 

 the behavior of my raccoons and those of the Chicago laboratory. 

 Our interpretations of this behavior are entirely different, of 

 course, except that we were both forced to give up the sensori- 

 motor explanation. Forced from that position, I thought the 

 animal might have memory, or at least a few memory images 

 carried in visual terms, hence a visual image. I still believe 

 that this is the simplest, or as some prefer to say, the most 

 "parsimonious hypothesis." Hunter prefers the assumption of 

 "imageless thought" or "sensory thought" to account for the 

 raccoons behavior, and for that of at least the youngest child. 

 This "imageless thought" must be, at least partly, visual, for 

 he says (p. 74), "In the present case there seems to be no room 

 for doubt that the object reacted to was the light." The reader 

 must remember that this light had been turned off for twenty- 

 five seconds before the animal was permitted to react to it, in 

 the maximal delays with raccoons, hence the "representative 

 functions," next mentioned. For he continues thus: "Now if 

 a representative function were involved in the behavior of the 

 reagents, as seems to have been the case with the raccoons and 

 children, it must in part at least, have been representative of the 

 lighted box, because all else — including the three possibilities 



4 Davis, H. B. The raccoon : a study in animal intelligence. Amer. Jour, of 

 Psychology, 1907, 18, 



5 1 have to thank Mrs. R. M. Yerkes for calling my attention to this splendidly 

 appropriate German name for the raccoon, and its superiority to the American 

 name, whose source is not certain. 



