NOTES AND LITERATURE 



213 



all! Whether to call this "something" by the same name as 

 the developed activity is one of the frequent grounds for un- 

 profitable controversy. 



L. W. Cole 5 has made an elaborate investigation of the in- 

 telligence of raccoons, with results of more than usual interest. 

 The raccoons are compared throughout with the famous cats of 

 Thorndike, and the work, like most recent work on animal in- 

 telligence, follows the outlines of the well known paper of the 

 author just mentioned. But Cole has made real and impor- 

 tant advances in both method and results. The raccoons are 

 either much more clever than the cats, or the methods employed 

 were better fitted for bringing out latent possibilities; probably 

 both these things are true. The experiments consisted largely 

 in allowing the animals to learn to open boxes closed by fasten- 

 ings of various degrees of complication. The raccoons learned 

 somewhat more readily than the cats. As in all other animals, 

 their learning was largely by trial and error. But they are 

 not restricted exclusively to that method, as Thorndike main- 

 tained to be the case for the cats ; decidedly not if we limit that 

 method to the gradual formation of an association between a 

 motor impulse and a sense perception. (1) There was clear 

 evidence that the animal at times, catches the idea, that a certain 

 act is what opens the door, so that he later acts directly and at 

 once on that idea. It is not a mere gradual exclusion of useless 

 movements, till only the useful ones are left. (2) The raccoon 

 learns by being put through an act. It learns without "in- 

 nervating its muscles, ' ' the great test for the possibility of learn- 

 ing in Thorndike 's cats. It learns to go into a box by a certain 

 entrance, through having been lifted into the box that way a 

 number of times. By beimr put throiurh them, it learns certain 

 acts which it was unable to learn by its own efforts. By putting 

 different raccoons through the same act in different ways, they 

 learned to perform it in different ways; for example, one learned 

 to lift a latch with its paws, another with its nose. (3) While 

 the raccoons, like most other animals, do not imitate each other 



experimenter perform a certain action many times, "catch the 

 idea" and endeavor to perform the action for themselves. This 



