MENTAL LIFE OF MONKEYS AND APES 85 



is presented in figure 19. It is of course incomplete and it is 

 offered only to indicate the extreme irregularity in performance. 



Problem la. First at the Right End 



It was decided on August 19 that the further continuation of 

 the work of Julius on problem 2 was not worth while. He had 

 become much discouraged, and although willing to work for 

 food, gave no indications whatever of improvement and seemed 

 to have exhausted his methods. It seemed wise instead of 

 giving up work with him in the multiple-choice method to return 

 to a form of problem 1. We may designate it as problem la. 

 The right box is definable as the first at the right end of the 

 series instead of the first at the left end as in the original problem 

 1. It was thought possible that Julius might quickly solve 

 this problem by a process similar to that used for problem 1. 



Work was begun on problem la, August 20, and for six suc- 

 cessive days two series of trials per day were given, the settings 

 for which as well as the resulting choices are given in table 10. 

 Most notable in these results is the large number of cases in which 

 Julius chose first the second box from the right end of the series, 

 or in other words that box which had been the right one in prob- 

 lem 2. Contrary to expectation, he showed no inclination to 

 abandon this tendency to choose the second from the right end, 

 and the ratio of right to wrong choices changed in the direction 

 opposite from expectation, beginning with 1 to 4 and ending on 

 the sixth day with to 20. 



It was obviously useless to continue the experiment further 

 since Julius had given up his attempts to locate the right box 

 in the first choice and was apparently satisfied to discover it 

 by a process of trial and error. He had, it would seem, satisfied 

 himself that the problem was insoluble. These results obtained 

 in problem la constitute a most interesting comment on the 

 effects of problem 2 on the orang utan. Behavior similar to 

 that which he developed well might have been obtained from 

 a child of three to four years placed in a like situation and forced 

 to strive, day after day, to solve a problem beyond its ideational 

 capacity. 



In many respects the most interesting and to the experimenter 

 the most surprising result of this long series of observations with 

 Julius was the lack of consistent improvement. It seemed 



