284 MIND IN EVOLUTION CHAP. 



that only one end of the rod could be used. 1 I wondered 

 whether anything could have suggested this operation to 

 the chimpanzee, and I found afterwards that when drink- 

 ing his water at lunch, he had a way of dipping straws in 

 and then sucking them. This, or the use of his finger in 

 searching, would perhaps be the point of departure for 

 this burrowing in a hole with a stick. But the analogy 

 seems somewhat remote. For the rest, the degree of 

 exactitude required in the execution was the most inter- 

 esting feature of this performance. 



Jimmy, on the other hand, absolutely failed to learn 

 this trick. Though repeatedly shown it with a hollow 

 bamboo, and either a stick to push the food out, or a 

 wire to fish it up with, he never made the slightest effort 

 to push the food out for himself. If I gave him the tube 

 with the stick inside it, he would pull it back instead 

 of pushing, though if the next moment I took it 

 in my own hands, he would look anxiously at the 

 opposite end to see the potato come out. It was a 

 remarkable and by no means isolated case of failure in 

 imitation. 2 



7. Use of stool. 



The first evening that Jimmy was with me, 1 observed 

 him pull a box towards him, climb on the top of it, and 

 thence jump to the top of the table. This can hardly 

 have been by design, as he could climb the table without 

 such aid with the greatest ease. But the next day I 

 made a series of experiments to see whether he would 

 learn to place a box or chair for himself, with a view to 

 standing on it. 



The experiment was not very easy to arrange for so 

 agile a climber, but I managed it by putting a piece of 

 potato on a table at such a distance from the point to 

 which his cord was fastened that he could just reach it if 



1 If he made a mistake on the point on subsequent days, he speedily 

 corrected himself. 



2 Mr. Shepherd also obtained negative results in this case with his 

 monkeys (Some Mental Processes of the Rhesus Monkey^ p. 35. Mr. 

 Shepherd, apparently by an oversight, speaks of his results as differing 

 from mine. With regard to the Rhesus they agree. My positive result 

 was obtained with the chimpanzee only). 



