LEARNING IN THE MONKEY 263 



The presence of F bothered D somewhat instead of assisting him 

 to learn. But D was often tried alone and rarely did more than 

 to pull the box around or twist himself into awkward positions. 



E seemed to have even more difficulty in learning than D, 

 although he had the longest arms of the six monkeys. Like D, 

 he was given the opportunity to watch B, C and F take food 

 from the box. He seemed to watch very closely but he never 

 showed so clearly efforts to imitate as D tried to imitate F. 

 That is he never sat beside B, C or F and moved his arm forward 

 automatically as the other monkey's arm passed into the box. 



Most of E's trials were made in company with B or alone. 

 He would usually drive B away and shake the box back and 

 forth or extend the arm to the elbow through the aperture. B 

 probably interfered with E's learning process because of his 

 quick dashes to the box and disconcerting eating when E was 

 hungry. E preferred to take food from the others rather than 

 try to procure his own. Despite this he made a great many 

 trials with no result. Like D he seemed to bungle about the 

 wires, twisting himself around in the most awkward positions, 

 until he fairly fell into a crouch near the aperture. Then his 

 hand easily reached the food. That it was an accidental asso- 

 ciation of movements was evident because after he seized the 

 second nut he was unable to repeat his method. It happened 

 as follows: 



April 24. — E and B were in the cage together. B was iso- 

 lated in the rear compartment. E tried a variety of futile 

 movements in order to reach the food. He extended his arm 

 up to the elbow into the box and tried repeatedly. Finally he 

 supinated the forearm and raised the posterior part of the body 

 above his head, similar to D's method. This failed and with his 

 arm still through the aperture, seemingly fatigued, he lowered 

 his body to a crouch and rested. He looked at me as he crouched 

 there; then he gradually extended his arm further. His position 

 happened to be correct and his arm easily passed through to the 

 shoulder. The hand reached the bottom of the box and he easily 

 extracted food. He repeated this arm movement a second time 

 and then changed his position to eat. After eating he tried to 

 obtain more food and seemed unable to repeat his method. He 

 pushed the box back and forth. After some time he resumed 

 D's method and extracted an onion. Then B was readmitted. 



