Allen, Association in the Guinea Pig. 



307 



pig would react. Therefore I desired to find whether the 

 mother herself could furnish a motive for a solution of a prob- 

 lem. In order to do that the following preliminary experiment 

 was made : 



I put guinea pigs two hours old in the experimental cage 

 while the mother was placed in a wire box in plain sight. They 

 could reach her by going to the small opening in the wire. She 

 seemed not to be a stimulus, and there was no attempt to reach 

 her. The little ones' independence of their mother is empha- 

 sized by the fact that they ran about quite freely and content- 

 edly for an hour or more away from her. On her part she paid 

 no attention to them, and only in rare cases did any mother 

 gnaw and attempt to reach her young family, even though the 

 little ones had been away from her for an hour or more. In 

 one case I removed a guinea pig five hours old from the mother 

 and left it three hours. At that time the mother was put in an 

 experimental cage within a simple wire labyrinth (Text-fig. l). 

 A 



W 



B 



Ttxl-fi^ure I. Labyrinth L 



A B \s the experimental cage used throughout all the experiments. The 

 floor is of wood, and the sides of small wire. It is ^}4 ft. long by 3 ft. wide, 

 and usually rests upon two stools or a table at such a level that the light from the 

 windows, IV, gives uniform illumination over the cage. 



The labyrinth, L L, is of light weight wire, Y^ in. mesh. The wire box, b, 

 is 10 by 10 by 10 in., thus being perfectly comfortable for a large guinea pig. It 

 is entered by a small entrance, y\ just large enough for a little guinea pig. 



[15] 



