456 STELLA B. VINCENT 



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The birds learned to sip sirup from bottles concealed in flower 

 forms and from an unconcealed bottle fastened to a post. The 

 amount of sugar taken by a bird per day amounted to 110 to 

 120 minims. From the behavior observations it seemed prob- 

 able that the same birds were coming back summer after summer. 

 They nested in a near by wood and only came to the garden 

 for their food. All the birds which fed from the bottles were 

 females. 



Strong (33) studied the Herring Gulls both in their breeding 

 places and in confinement at the University of Chicago and has 

 written up his results in two papers and Tyler (38) has published 

 some notes on the nest life of the Brown Creeper in Massa- 

 chusetts. 



LEARNING 



Many of the studies in animal learning have been noticed 

 under the head of the particular sense control which was in- 

 volved. The articles are not so numerous as in 1913. Basset's 

 (2) study of habit formation in a strain of rats of less than normal 

 brain weight may be mentioned. The rats were some derived 

 from experimental inbreeding at the Wistar Institute of Anat- 

 omy and Biology and their relative brain weight (relative to 

 body length) was 6| per cent, less than that of their normal 

 controls. Basset worked with several' generations of these for 

 over two years on maze and puzzle box problems and he used 

 in all 62 inbred animals and 62 normal controls. Tests were 

 made not only for learning but also for retention and for re- 

 learning. In all of the experiments the rats of lesser brain weight 

 did poorer work on an average than did the normal control 

 series. The inbred rats of the seventh generation worked less 

 well than those of the sixth and those of the eighth generation 

 not so well as those of the seventh. " It would seem," the 

 author says, "although lessening brain weight had ceased after 

 the fourth generation that the ability to form habits lessened 

 progressively with successive generations of inbreeding. The 

 writer nowhere urges that this lesser ability is due to the in- 

 breeding per se. 



Of a different type and far less well controlled is some work 

 which is reported in a paper on learning and relearning which 

 comes from the Bedford College for Women, University of 

 London (20). The work was under the immediate control of 



