MENTAL LIFE OF MONKEYS AND APES 113 



In pursuance of this idea, I suspended a piece of bread five 

 feet from the floor of the cage, and a few feet to one side of it, 

 I placed a box from which it could be reached, or at least easily 

 seized by jum.ping. Sobke shortly walked to a point beneath the 

 bait and leaping into the air, seized it. 



I then replaced the bait, raising it to a height of five feet 

 ten inches from the floor of the cage. When I had retired, 

 Sobke placed himself in the proper position beneath, looked 

 up at it, but went away without jumping for it. During the 

 remaining ten minutes of observation, he paid no further atten- 

 tion to the bait, having satisfied himself evidently that it was 

 beyond his reach. 



]My use of this test was concluded on June 16 when once 

 more I suspended a piece of bread six feet from the floor and 

 placed a few feet to one side the eighteen inch box, number 3, 

 from which had the monkey pushed it to a point directly under 

 the bread, he could have obtained the food easily. 



Sobke noticed the food promptly, and from time to time 

 as he wandered about, he glanced at it out of the corner of his 

 eye, but not once did he sit down and look at it steadily and 

 directly as Julius and Skirrl might have done. 



In the first twenty minutes of observation the monkey made 

 no attempt either to use the box or to reach the food by jump- 

 ing. I then placed the box directly under the bait, and scarcely 

 had I withdrawn from the cage before Sobke climbed up on it 

 and looked toward the food. He could not reach it without 

 jumping, and he made no effort to get it. I had left a second 

 box in the cage, — one which I had been using as a seat. Sobke 

 now went to this box, placed his hands on it, looked toward the 

 bait, and then went to a distant part of the cage. No further 

 indications were obtained during the remainder of the period 

 of observation of interest in the boxes as possible means of 

 obtaining the desired food. 



It is of course obvious that this experiment was not long 

 enough continued to justify the conclusion that either Sobke 

 or Skirrl could not use the boxes or even learn to place one 

 box upon another in order to obtain the bait. The experiment, 

 like several others which are being described briefly, was used 

 to supplement the multiple-choice experiment, and the experi- 

 menter's chief interest was to discover the number and variety 



