Cole, Intelligence of Raccoons. 249 



(6) They could be made to duplicate the exact act they were 

 put through by the arrangement of apparatus so that other acts 

 were more difficult. The duplication was then perfect in all 

 trials. 



(7) The average time required for the first success after being 

 put through is very much less than the average time for the first 

 success by trial and error. This was true in nine out of eleven 

 boxes and with the color showing device. 



(8) Finally, the animals learned acts by being put through 

 them which they repeatedly had failed to learn when unaided. 

 In all these cases the act was a duplicate of that which they had 

 been put through. 



ON THE PRESENCE OF MENTAL IMAGES. 



It would seem that nine-tenths ot the experimental evidence for 

 the absence of ideas in dogs and cats comes from their inability 

 to learn from being put through. The experiments were almost 

 identical with some of those described above. If inability thus 

 to learn is evidence against the presence of ideas, then ability to 

 do so should be equally strong evidence tor it. We are, therefore, 

 already embarked on the discussion of the presence of ideas in 

 raccoons. It seems to me that animals which, so far as we know 

 at present, are utterly unable to learn save by innervating their 

 own muscles must be devoid of ideas or at least "of a stock of 

 images which are motives for acts." This conclusion of Thorn- 

 dike's is, I think, of the utmost value to those who experiment 

 with animals, and the evidence against it in the case of cats is 

 meager in the extreme. Therefore, I must first urge the reader 

 to compare point by point the behavior of cats and raccoons in 

 put-through experiments, and to note the radical difference at 

 every point. 



We may now consider what further evidence of the presence of 

 mental images is furnished by the raccoons and what behavior 

 of theirs seems to show a lack of images. 



Recognition of Objects. — Some of the observations of this are 

 commonplace enough. First, on the fifth day after I received the 

 raccoons one of them climbed to a box, then to the top of a barrel 

 on which the bottle of milk had been placed. When lifted down 

 he at once repeated the performance. A day or so later, another, 



