344 'Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology. 



must here be brought together, (i) Thorndike (p. 80) is authority for the state- 

 ment that "cats would claw at the loop or button when the door was open," and 

 "at the place where the loop has been though none was there." (2) Cole, pp. 218, 

 253 found that raccoons did neither of these things, though they were given oppor- 

 tunities to do both. (3) When the latch is fastened to the side of the box and on the 

 opposite side of the door from that of the immediately preceding test the raccoons 

 did claw a few times (Cole records six times by two young animals, in their earlier 

 trials; Davis, apparently, eight times, one adult animal, whether earlier or later 

 trials is not stated) at the place where the latch had been. If Mr. Davis had used 

 an easily discriminated fastening like a loop or platform his results would have been 

 more easily comparable with Thorndike's and Cole's. He does not saythat the rac- 

 coon ever clawed at a fastening when the door was open. Surely we must not expect 

 the raccoon, in his early trials, to limit his efforts to projecting objects as he will do 

 in his later trials. Do Mr. Davis's records, then, really agree with Thorndike's 

 statement that "the loop is to the cat what the ocean is to a man when thrown into 

 it when half asleep" (Thorndike, p. 80) ? This is a phrase meant to describe 

 about as near a total lack of discrimination as "thought can pump out of itself." 

 Is it consistent with the raccoon's responding to small differences in complex rela- 

 tions .f" Truly the small number of cases must be recorded, but they must not be 

 overloaded with conclusions. 



It is, indeed, an ungracious task to find defects in another's work and in a pre- 

 vious resume the reviewer largely refrained from it. Yet the first step in assigning 

 the true value to the record of an investigation is to compare interpretations in the 

 same paper. From such comparisons emerges a truth, well known to most investi- 

 gators. In our early experiments with an animal his behavior suggests ambiguous 

 or contradictory conclusions. This is a hint from the animal that our apparatus 

 or method or both need modification. Watch the animal closely and the direction 

 the modification should take will be suggested. Refuse to modify the method or 

 cling to apparatus already used with some other animal and you remain in the first 

 stages of your work with contradictory or doubtful conclusions on every side. Care 

 in varying the conditions seems to show, however, fairly consistent behavior in 

 any one type of animal. 



Finally it appears that cats and monkeys are so widely different in intelligence 

 that it is very diflicult to interpret the behavior of raccoons as agreeing with that 

 of both the other animals. 



L. w. cole. 



