194 MIND IN EVOLUTION CHAP. 



place, finally gets bucket up to top, but knocks it back in trying 

 to seize it. I then show him. 



2. Does not get string well at right place, but backs well, and 

 so manages to pull bucket up. 



3. Took right place, helped self with paw, and got it. 



4. Does not go at right point first, but gets towards it, and 

 rapidly gets meat. 



Two days' interval. 



I. Jack gets it without difficulty. 



It will be seen that Jack did not require to be taught to 

 pull at the string. This might be explained by saying 

 that Jack had come by this time to pull at strings as such. 

 This, however, would be to pass over the fact that he first 

 ran downstairs, trying to get the meat there. I think, 

 therefore, we ought to call it an adaptive use of the expe- 

 rience previously gained with the string. Next, Jack had 

 to learn the right place to pull at. Pointing did not teach 

 him this, as the record shows. He learnt it apparently 

 from seeing how the meat was pulled up ; and by the 

 same method, also no doubt aided by his own failures and 

 successes, he learnt to back properly, at the same time 

 letting the string run through his teeth. On the whole, 

 the experiment is rather a complicated one. It does not 

 succeed unless the animal takes the string, backs away 

 from the banisters, and lets the string run through his 

 teeth as he does so without letting go. Yet Jack prac- 

 tically learnt it at the fourth trial, and only wanted to be 

 shown once on the following day. I should ascribe this 

 success to a fusion of the method of perception of results 

 with that of experience of success and failure. 1 



(3). Lever. 



I took an old bird-cage, and passed the pole laterally 

 through the wires of the door, weaving them in and out. 



1 Since writing the above, I have been shown an interesting account of 

 a similar performance by a bird, in Our Bird Friends, by R. Kearton. 

 For the benefit of some blue tits, Mr. Kearton hung the kernel of a 

 Barcelona nut from a stump. The little birds could hang on to it with 

 their feet and peck at it. " Great Tits tried time after time to imitate 

 their lighter brethren, but never once succeeded in maintaining their hold 

 upon the kernel. But one, wiser than the rest, did a much cleverer thing 

 one day. He stood on the stump, and, seizing the thread, hauled it in 

 reef by reef with his bill and feet until he got the kernel to the top, when 

 he held it down and chipped his well-deserved reward off it" (p. u). 



