Washburn and Bentley, Color-Discrimination. 125 



bite and an object of a particular color, thus displaying in the 

 service of the nutritive instinct a fair degree of "intelligence." 



3. Experience involving pleasurable consequences in connec- 

 tion with one object and the absence of such consequences in 

 connection with another object may be powerful enough to guide 

 an animal in the performance of an instinctive action, but not 

 powerful enough to suppress the performance of such an action. 



4. An influence, such as the actual presence of food in one pair 

 of forceps, or the fact that the fish entered the compartment on 

 the side nearest a particular pair of forceps, may be completely 

 swamped when the association between a color and the biting 

 impulse is fully formed, but may have some eff^ect while the asso- 

 ciation is non-existent or incomplete. 



One or two comments may be added. The rapidity with which 

 the fish learned was a surprise to us. In general, it may be prophe- 

 sied that the more deep-rooted and essential the instinct appealed 

 to by the "experience" to which an animal is subjected, the more 

 rapidly will the animal profit by that experience. It is quite 

 probable that the maximal "intelligence" of which such a fish as 

 Semotilus is capable is enlisted in the service of the feeding instinct. 

 The third conclusion seems to us of great interest. When we 

 began the experiments by the Method of Choice we were impressed 

 with the probability that the fish's previous experience by the 

 Method of Inhibition, though it had failed to influence the 

 animal's behavior under that method, was making itself felt in the 

 very rapid learning to choose rightly between red and green. 

 Although this cannot be dogmatically asserted as a fact, yet the 

 speed of the creature's acquisition in this case, together with its 

 apparent entire failure to learn by the other method, aff'ords a very 

 pretty illustration of the truth that the chief function of experience 

 is to guide rather than to inhibit instinct. 



