236 'Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology. 



I supposed at the outset that my experiments to test this hypothesis 

 in the case of raccoons would be few and perfectly confirmatory 

 of ThoRNDiKE's view. But the behavior of the raccoons on the 

 second and later days of my experiments soon indicated that this 

 confirmation might not be forthcoming. It will be recalled that 

 similar experiments of Thorndike's'^ on monkeys were incon- 

 clusive, and that the monkeys experimented with by Kinnaman 

 could not be handled. I took pains, therefore, to handle the young 

 raccoons as much as possible, and they showed no objection to it 

 for many months. Then one refused to be handled. 



On the second day of my experiments with the female, No. 4, 

 in Box I (button), and much to my surprise, she turned, on the 

 thirty-third trial, and went quickly back into the box. She opened 

 the door in six seconds, came out, was fed for a moment from the 

 bottle and then immediately re-entered the box. Now possibly 

 the reader is saying, "Yes, this is the phenomenon observed by 

 Thorndike in cats which were pushed toward the door or held 

 near the door." This is not the case. This young raccoon had 

 been picked up by the nape of the neck, lifted quickly through the 

 door and dropped on the floor of the box. When thus held the 

 four legs of the animal hang down limp as they do in the case of a 

 kitten carried m the mouth of its mother. This fact makes this 

 method of holding and lifting the animal most convenient. There 

 was no innervation of her own muscles. Four days later when 

 tried in this box she went in on the second, third and fourth trials. 



No. 3, the second raccoon tried in this box, went in himself on 

 the twenty-second, twenty-third and twenty-fourth trials. He also 

 had been lifted into the box on the preceding trials. On the 

 forty-fifth and from the forty-seventh to the fifty-first trials, inclu- 

 sive, he re-entered the box. On the fifty-second trial he started 

 back but turned at the door and did not go in again that day. 

 Subsequently, he went in regularly until his hunger began to be 

 satisfied. During his last eighty-five trials in this boxhe re-entered 

 it of his own accord eighty-two times. On the seventy-first trial, 

 and several times thereafter, he was held near the door to make 

 him go in but this was not done with any one of the animals until 

 they had gone in spontaneously frequently enough to show that 

 it was an established part of the reaction. Moreover, the hold- 



^ Thorndike, E. L. The Mental Life of the Monkeys. Psych. Rev. Moriogr. SuppL, vol. 3, no. 5. 

 1901. 



