ersistent
experiment (2) of the rapid elimination of ineffective movements, and
(3) of remembering the solution when it was discovered. Kinnaman taught
two macaques the Hampton Court Maze, a feat which probably means a
memory of movements, and we get an interesting glimpse in his
observation that they began to smack their lips audibly when they
reached the latter part of their course, and began to feel, dare one
say, "We are right this time."

In getting into "puzzle-boxes" and into "combination-boxes" (where the
barriers must be overcome in a definite order), monkeys learn by the
trial and error method much more quickly than cats and dogs do, and a
very suggestive fact emphasized by Professor Thorndike is "a process of
sudden acquisition by a rapid, often apparently instantaneous
abandonment of the unsuccessful movements and selection of the
appropriate one, which rivals in suddenness the selections made by human
beings in similar performances." A higher note still was sounded by one
of Thorndike's monkeys which opened a puzzle-box at once, eight months
after his previous experience with it. For here was some sort of
registration of a solution.

Imitation

Two chimpanzees in the Dublin Zoo were often to be seen washing the two
shelves of their cupboard and "wringing" the wet cloth in the approved
fashion. It was like a caricature of a washerwoman, and someone said,
"What mimics they are!" Now we do not know whether that was or was not
the case with the chimpanzees, but the majority of the experiments that
have been made do not lead us to attach to imitation so much importance
as is usually given to it by the popular interpreter. There are
instances where a monkey that had given up a puzzle in despair returned
to it when it had seen its neighbour succeed, but most of the
experiments suggested that the creature has to find out for itself. Even
with such a simple problem as drawing food near with a stick, it often
seems of little use to show the monkey how it is done. Placing a bit of
food outside his monkey's cage, Professor Holmes "poked it about with
the stick so as to give her a suggestion of how the stick might be
employed to move the food within reach, but although the act was
repeated many times Lizzie never showed the least inclination to use the
stick to her advantage." Perhaps the idea of a "tool" is beyond the
Bonnet Monkey, yet here again we must be cautious, for Professor L. T.
Hobhouse had a monkey of