172 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



Table 5 gives the results of an experiment with a Newt which 

 first of all was placed in the water of the jar when the labyrinth 

 was immediately slowly pressed down upon it into the jar. The 

 animal was placed facing directly away from the opening leading 

 from the lowest storey a to the next b. It would first begin to 

 nose the roof of the first storey, going round after a delay either 

 to the right or the left corner, where it would rise and immedi- 

 ately re-begin nosing in b. After at first a lengthy delay it 

 would nose around to the second opening, going either right or 

 left of the pillar. And so with the other storeys, the last one 

 leading it out into its vivarium home. The table shows that 

 the Newt at the end of the 25th test had formed an almost 

 perfect habit of climbing up through the spiral without making 

 any delays by persistently nosing at one place as previously. 

 Later, nosing set in again, in an acute form, perhaps the 

 result of fatigue and the consequent relaxation of inhibitive 

 control of its instinctive stereoscopic nosing responses. The 

 trials lasted over four days, and fifteen minutes' interval was 

 allowed between each trial. It should be understood that 

 the Newt never learnt to climb up the spiral, without any 

 nosing at all ; it nosed its way all round the spiral, but showed 

 its capacity for learning and inhibiting by not wasting time 

 in nosing in one place only. It kept on the move in the 

 right direction. 



The table also shows that the Newt early formed a fixed habit 

 of going to the left of the central pillar in c, and it is important 

 to observe that it was in c that it first learnt to cease making 

 any delay through nosing. Further, it will be seen that in 

 general as the nosing becomes less in the three storeys, so fixed 

 habits crystallise out. For example, a left-right-left habit was 

 formed in the three succeeding storeys b, c, d, after delays had 

 been cut out. In 32 it nosed in b and went right. See also 36, 

 42 ; and, although it is not shown, the whole of the tests up to 

 about 20 gave no regular habits, right or left, in b and d, because 

 it was in these two storeys that the Newt delayed, always nosing 

 with a persistence which, if it had been intelligent, would have 

 been called " determination," but, being useless and unintelligent, 

 must be described only as " stubbornness." These habits of 

 movement right or left are significant, for it is to be observed 



