xii ARTICULATE IDEAS 273 



In general, he had two chief movements with his stick. 

 The banana was generally given him inside a cigar box. 

 He would reach out with his stick at the box, and sweep 

 it round by a radial motion, so that it came up to the 

 side of his cage. It will be observed that in so doing 

 he was not obeying the natural impulse to draw it straight 

 towards him, but merely was bringing it to a point to 

 which he could afterwards go and get it. One half of 

 his cage, however, was covered with plate glass, so that 

 if in describing a quarter circle he swept the box up 

 against the glass, he could not reach it at once with 

 his arm. He would then alter the motion, and rake 

 with the point of the stick, drawing the box in in a 

 straight line. When he had to fish for a box close by 

 the wall, he would take trouble to get his stick in between 

 the wall and the box, showing that he was quite aware of 

 the way in which he had to push it. On the other hand, 

 he not only, as I have mentioned, failed to learn the use of 

 the crook ; but 1 have seen him sweep at the box with 

 the crook downwards, so that the stick passed over the top. 



On one occasion, when I borrowed a child's hoop, and gave it 

 him in place of a stick, he used it very unintelligently. Instead of 

 getting the hoop round the banana, he made sweeps with it, so 

 that the curvature kept driving the fruit away. I should like to 

 have made further experiments to see how he would have learnt 

 the proper use of the hoop, but its small owner became alarmed 

 for its safety. The Professor sometimes tried to find remarkable 

 substitutes for a stick. On one occasion, when he was trying an 

 experiment with a rope, which he could not understand, he spied 

 a long, heavy iron bar lying by his cage. He dragged this up, and 

 it came over the rope, of which he had one end in his cage, while 

 the other end was fastened to the box outside. He tried to push 

 the bar out towards the box, and failing, tugged at the rope, lift- 

 ing it up, and the bar with it. The bar of course ran down the 

 rope, and nearly reached the box. How much of this was 

 intentional, the reader may determine for himself. In any case, 



am not going to infer that the chimpanzee understood the 

 >rinciple of the inclined plane. 



One day I gave him a rope with a noose to throw over 

 the box in place of his stick. I did not give him any hint, 

 but he soon tried it in a vague way. He did not, how- 



