XII 



ARTICULATE IDEAS 



289 



Wall 



actening 



rope and so fasten it. The rope thus became a swing, 

 and if it was either too short or too long, the monkey is 

 said to have climbed up and altered the fastening. 

 9. Unwinding chain. 



In dealing with his chain generally, Jimmy was far less 

 clever than Miss Romanes' Cebus. He could never be 

 relied on to undo any serious tangle ; l and he con- 

 stantly got himself twisted by wandering to and fro. 

 He would, however, as a rule, undo a single twist by 



retracing his steps ; and some- 

 times would undo a more com- 

 plicated one by a developed 

 form of the method of trial and 

 error, which consisted in this : 

 that each time he felt the cord 

 shortening on him, he would go 

 back the way he had come. In 

 this way, by successive trials, he 

 was likely to get free. He did 

 not, however, improve in this 

 respect in the course of a con- 

 siderable number of experiments. 

 It would take up too much 

 space to relate the whole of this 

 series. I will mention one or two 

 points that seem significant. After the knotted string 

 experiment, when I had the potato in a basket attached by 

 a cord to a handle of the bureau, which he could reach by 

 a stick if he had the full length of his chain, I passed the 

 chain round an oak table, 2 thereby shortening it for prac- 

 tical purposes. (Fig. i.) The first result was as follows : 



1 Contrast Miss Romanes : "When his chain becomes twisted round 

 the bars of a ' clothes-horse ' (which is given him to run about upon), 

 and thus too short for his comfort, he looks at it intently and pulls it with 

 his fingers this way and that, and when he sees how the turns are taken 

 he deliberately goes round and round the bars, first this way, then that, 

 until the chain is quite disentangled" (p. 486). From what Jimmy did, I 

 think he could have learnt this if he were a little more persistent and 

 attentive, but after seeing his failures, I can realise better the high degree 

 of " articulateness," both of perception and purpose, implied in the 

 description given by Miss Romanes. 



2 There had previously been two or three untwisting experiments. 



P 



FIG. i. 

 k, knot ; /, basket with potato. 



