770 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



actually sets out to find a red tennis ball on a grassy lawn, his 

 steps being plotted while he is making the search. The ball was 

 placed in all cases so that it could be seen from a distance of ten 

 steps and at a uniform distance forty steps from the center stake, 



in order that the tracings of 

 different persons could be com- 

 pared as to time and length of 

 course traversed. 



No attempt was made to 

 do more than was necessary 

 to obtain a suggestion which 

 might serve to indicate the 

 logic and method of the pig- 

 eons. In all only sixteen trac- 

 ings were taken, and this num- 

 ber includes one experiment 

 on a shepherd dog. Of the 

 whole number, ten conform 

 more or less closely to Prof. 

 Story's curve. Three of the 

 best of these are reproduced 

 in Fig. 9. Two correspond evi- 

 dently to the circular type 

 (Fig. 6). These are given in 

 Fig. 10, together with the only 



one which is in any degree rectangular, the " Yankee " type, and 

 this was not made by a Yankee at all, but by an Irish boy twelve 

 years of age. Three of the curves are hardly susceptible of logical 

 classification. 



A point of interest in this connection attaches to the dotted 

 line in Fig. 9*. This represents the path of L. W., the university 

 carpenter, a man sixty-five years old, who had worked at his 

 trade of straight lines and right angles for forty-five years. I 

 had expected a typical rectangular curve. Instead he gave an 

 ideal spiral. After finding the ball, however, he volunteered the 

 following suggestive remark : " After I got started, I thought, if 

 I was going to do it again, I would go at it on the square. I 

 started out/' he added, "before I thought." Thus instinctive 

 logic won the day against forty-five years of special training. 



If instinctive, however, this logic should be found almost as 

 well developed in children as in adults. Accordingly, spicing the 

 ball with candy or a small coin, several experiments were tried 

 upon children from three to twelve years of age. In general the 

 above statement was supported ; but two of the number, aged re- 

 spectively three and six, failed to show anything like the amount 

 of search-logic possessed by most of the pigeons or the shepherd 



+ Starting point. 



U) step circle 



Ideal curve. 



Path of T. P. H. It. minutes. 



u u T.L.B. 7 " 



~- L.W. 5 " 



