EXPERIMENTS ON THE RABBIT 163 



" 4. Red on right. Went straight to black. Box removed. 



" 5. (Third day). Red on left. Went to black hesitatingly, 

 barely touched it; box removed. 



" 6. Red on right. Went hesitatingly to red. 



"7. (Fourth day). Went towards black, seemed to look at 

 red, touched black. Box removed 5 . 



"8. Red on right. Sat a long time facing the box. Finally 

 sauntered to black side and casually touched black. Box 

 removed. 



"9. (Fifth day.) Red on left. Touches black with nose. 

 Box removed. 



"10. Red on .right. Went straight to red." 



Only twice in the ten interpolated red and velvet black tests 

 did the rabbit touch the red, whereas in all the 30 red and grey 

 experiments of the series she went at once to the red. A possible 

 explanation for this may have been that the velvet black looked 

 darker than the red to the rabbit, and that she had acquired the 

 habit of reacting to the darker impression as such, that is, irre- 

 spective of the absolute brightnesses involved. This possibility 

 will be considered later. Or, in view of the small number of the 

 red and black tests, the choices of the black may have been 

 accidental. 



Series 14. Bradley saturated blue and Hering grey number 7. 

 Blue opens. On the first day 12 experiments were made; on the 

 succeeding days eight each. Otherwise the conditions were as 

 in the immediately preceding series with this rabbit. The total 

 number of experiments was 51: the total percentage of correct 

 choices was 57. Her percentages for the successive days were 

 54, 62, 62, 62, 54, 50, 37. On the first day every choice but one 

 was of the left-hand door. On the sixth day every choice but one 

 was of the right-hand door. Various causes might have produced 

 this poor record. The blue might have looked so much like the 

 grey that the rabbit found it difficult to distinguish them ; or, 

 if she were capable of acting on the principle of choosing the 

 darker impression as such, and found the blue lighter than the 

 grey, she might have been unable to reverse her habit of choos- 

 ing the darker; or, finally, the blue might have made upon her 

 a qualitatively new (color?) impression, which she did not have 

 time to learn to associate with food. The one hypothesis made 

 5 See page 151. 



