CORRESP ONDENCE. 



845 



in the sixth forty," etc., and remarks: 

 " Suppose the cat had, after the third 

 accidental success, been able to reason? 

 She would then have, the next time 

 and all succeeding times, performed the 

 act as soon as put in." Not long ago 

 the writer and a man whose high intel- 

 ligence can not be questioned, in mo- 

 ments of relaxation were trying to do 

 one of the familiar ring puzzles — en- 

 deavoring to separate a ring from two 

 others of peculiar shape and then to 

 join the three. After repeated trials, 

 one would loosen it, but could not re- 

 place it; the other finally succeeded in 

 replacing it, but could not loosen it. 

 Then the one could replace it, but not 

 loosen it; the other loosen, but not re- 

 place it, and each was closely watching 

 the other all the time. It was half an 

 hour or more before either could both 

 loosen and replace the ring, occasional 

 successful attempts not being repeated 

 until after several succeeding failures. 

 Contrast the relation of the brain of the 

 dazed and indifferent and peculiarly be- 

 deviled cat to the puzzle presented to it 

 by the inside of the box with the ear- 

 nest effort of the two men to solve the 

 ring puzzle. Who has not found a task 

 more difficult the fifth or sixth time 

 than the second or third, and has only 

 performed it with ease after repeated at- 

 tempts of varying degrees of success and 

 failure ? 



In conclusion, the writer begs leave 

 to relate an incident, which has not be- 

 fore appeared in print, that profoundly 

 impressed him with the belief that at 

 least in one instance one particular 

 animal displayed reason. One Sunday 

 morning, a dozen years or more ago, 

 he was standing on the bank of the 

 Ohio River at the Sewickley Ferry. A 

 family group, accompanied by a large 

 Newfoundland dog, hailed the ferry- 

 man and got in his boat, leaving the 

 dog, which persuasively barked and 

 wagged his tail, on the bank. As the 

 boat pulled out into the stream the 

 dog whined, and then made ready to 

 leap in after it. Then he stopped at 

 the water's edge, and, with head down, 

 gazed intently at the river for several 

 seconds — it seemed a minute or more. 

 Then he ran up the bank more than a 

 hundred feet, stopped, looked at the re- 

 ceding boat, plunged into the stream, 

 and swam vigorously. The current, 

 bearing him down, made his course di- 

 agonal to the bank. A boy standing by 

 my side said: "Isn't that a smart dog? 

 If he'd been a crazy dog he'd have 

 jumped in where he was, but he ran up 

 the bank so the current wouldn't wash 

 him down away from the boat." 



But the dog, swimming with all his 

 vigor, was borne past the boat when 

 within twenty feet or so of it; he 

 endeavored to straighten his course 

 without success, and then, in a long 

 semicircle, swam around to the near 

 bank, landing two or three hundred feet 

 below the place whence the ferryboat 

 had started. 



What this dog would have done if 

 placed, utterly hungry, in a box from 

 which he could only liberate nimself by 

 stepping on a platform or turning a 

 wooden button, I do not know. 



Logan G. McPhersox. 



Pittsburg, August 3, 1899. 



Mr. Frederic D. Bond, of 413 

 South Forty-fourth Street, Philadel- 

 phia, writes: Of the accuracy of Dr. 

 Thorndike's experiments I have no 

 doubt, but certain facts connected with 

 them seem to deprive the observations 

 of much of their relevance. 



Dr. Thorndike states that he ar- 

 ranged his experiments to give reasoning 

 every chance to display itself, if it ex- 

 isted, and to observe those in which the 

 acts required and the thinking involved 

 were not far removed from the acts and 

 feelings of ordinary animal life. Of 

 these experiments one of the chief was 

 to determine whether and in what way 

 a cat would escape from a box opening 

 by turning a button. Now, I submit 

 that in this and the succeeding experi- 

 ments the conditions Dr. Thorndike fan- 

 cied to exist by no means did so. Sim- 

 ple as the release of a door by a button 

 seems to us, the apparent simplicity 

 arises merely from our empirical knowl- 

 edge of what does happen in such a 

 situation. Actually to think out the 

 rationale of the matter, as an animal 

 having no experience either personally 

 or from heredity would have to do, in- 

 volves very complex mental processes. 

 The environment of a human being 

 is vastly different from an animars, 

 though of this fact we constantly lose 

 sight in reasoning; of mechanical ap- 

 pliances and principles, for example, an 

 animal knows nothing, and yet we are 

 too apt to suppose it regarding the 

 world with a store of ancestral and in- 

 dividual experiences utterly foreign to 

 it; and then, on its failing to do what, 

 in the light of such experience, seems to 

 us easy, we proceed to call into ques- 

 tion its possession of reason. . . . 



That the cats did finally learn to 

 escape shows, according to Dr. Thorn- 

 dike, " the wearing smooth of a path in 

 the brain, not the decisions of a rational 

 consciousness." May I ask Dr. Thorn- 



