Literary Notices. 343 



of right choices in brightness tests, and 24 per cent in color tests. One of the four 

 animals made 40.7 per cent of right choices in the color tests. This fact is ascribed 

 to brightness differences in the colors used. It must be remembered that by chance 

 alone the animals would have made 17 per cent of right colors. It seems possible, 

 therefore, that both averages are too low, due to the steady pressure of an instinctive 

 impulse, for the reviewer has used the first piece of apparatus and found that 

 apparently the raccoons could not pass a single food container tuithout both reaching 

 into it and looking into it. Instead, the animal would go to one end of the row of 

 vessels, explore the first one carefully both by touch and sight, then the next, and 

 so on until the vessel with food in it was found; then it would go on in the same 

 way to the end of the row, and back again, rarely skipping a single vessel. The 

 raccoon has, then, a very strong instinctive impulse to reach into and to look into 

 all sorts of openings. 



Imitation. No certain cases ot imitation were discovered by the author. 



Comparisons. Mr. Davis "correlates" his results with those of Berry on the 

 white rat and of Cole on the raccoon. Berry very properly compares the behav- 

 ior of a rat which learns by trial and error with one given an opportunity to learn 

 by imitation and concludes, "It seems to me that we ought to be able to say a prion, 

 in the light of these facts, that no ordinary rat would be able to open a door by pull- 

 ing a string, simply from having seen another do it, without first making a number 

 of random movements." To this Mr. Davis replies, "It is upon such a slender 

 basis that Mr. Berry infers imitation" (Davis, p. 483). This seems quite unfair. 

 It is upon no such basis that Berry infers imitation, but upon repeated experiments 

 in which the imitator developed a tendency (not present before) to pull a knot after 

 seeing another rat pull it many times. On such experiments as a "basis" with 

 most carefully arranged control tests, which proved that the tendency was due to 

 example alone, Mr. Berry makes the very conservative observation quoted, and 

 first rate confirmation of its truth has been forthcoming. Watson has demon- 

 strated the immense role that kinaesthetic sensations play in the life of the rat, and 

 Berry has found an advance upon this grade of imitation in other animals. Why 

 invert Berry's argument to the neglect of his recorded facts ? 



So Berry is said to "beg the whole question" because he "lays great stress on 

 the visual sensation as the chief factor in what he calls the final imitative act." 

 Here again it would seem as if Berry were, instead only allowing proper impor- 

 tance to kinaesthetic sensations, since the rat which learns by trial and error has them, 

 while the imitator must depend first of all on sight. The reviewer is unfamiliar 

 with the behavior of rats, but he can say of raccoons that the experimenter had 

 better lay very great stress on their visual sensations of movements for they are 

 almost as skillful muscle readers as the trained dog, " Roger, " of recent fame. The 

 danger is that the experimenter will not ascertain until too late how delicate are 

 the movements which the animals can detect by sight. 



In a second correlation, what Cole described as due either to imitation or to the 

 presence of visual images in raccoons has, what seems to Mr. Davis, a third expla- 

 nation. As this additional explanation ofi^ered is based on a complete misunder- 

 standing of the conditions of the experiment we may pass it by with the remark that 

 perhaps Cole was not clear in his description. 



A third correlation with Cole's work, and one already referred to, is of so vital 

 importance in interpreting the behavior of raccoons that all the relevant statements 



