Cole, Intelligence of Raccoons. 239 



the twenty-eighth trial, in which she may have been helped by 

 the motion of the experimenter's hand in the direction of the 

 opening. No. 3 after the fifth trial went in when placed on the 

 box. On the eighteenth trial he re-entered the box from the floor 

 of the room, and later he went by way of the step and the end of 

 the box. On the twenty-seventh trial he climbed up over the 

 front of the box and dropped into the opening in its top, thus sub- 

 stituting a direct for a roundabout way. No. 2 went in when put 

 on the box after the eighth trial. From the twelfth trial he went 

 in when put on the step, and from the twenty-second trial he went 

 in from the floor of the room. In the extract from "Animal 

 Intelligence" already. quoted Thorndike says, "So, though you 

 put the second cat on the box beside the hole, she doesn't try to 

 get into the box through it. " This description certainly does not 

 suit the behavior of raccoons. 



Having shown that raccoons learn to go into a box by being 

 dropped in through a hole in the top, we have yet to answer the 

 question, will the raccoon learn to operate a fastening, to per- 

 form a complicated act, by being put through the motions neces- 

 sary to do the act ? In order to make trial of this I decided first 

 to put two of the animals through the act of opening cages and 

 let two of them learn it by trial. If the average time of the first 

 success for those put through should be shorter than the average 

 time for those not put through, it would be fair to conclude that 

 the putting through facilitated learning. In order to make the 

 evidence especially strong I selected for most of the putting 

 through experiments the two raccoons which, up to this time, had 

 shown themselves slowest in learning the mechanisms, Nos. 3 and 

 4. It seems to me, therefore, that much weight must attach to 

 the averages. The average time required for the first success in 

 each of eleven boxes by the animals which were put through the 

 act is 41.6 seconds; by those not put through 90.2 seconds or more 

 than twice the former average. The results are shown in Table 

 VII. 



In Table VIII the animals which were put through failed to 

 escape by their own unaided efforts, but succeeded after being put 

 through. I have other instances of this. 



It will be seen that in two of the eleven boxes the averages 

 favor those not put through. Box 3 shows an average of 85 sec- 

 onds for those put through and of but 26 seconds for those not 



