in our consciousness. It is not because they are common, or because they are, in deepest origin, partly instinctive, that I lay such stress upon them. It is because they are in their proper and almost inextricable entanglement with our individual or temperamental functions, absolutely essential elements of all our rationality, of all our mental developments, of all our worth as thinkers, as workers or as producers; it is, too, because of this value of imitation as the necessary concomitant, and condition, and instrument of all sound originality which is still so inadequately understood by teachers, by critics of art, by students of human nature generally it is on these accounts that I deem the study of the imitative functions probably the most important task in the psychology of the immediate future." In view of the analogies which we may safely infer to obtain between at least the higher animals and man, it is not too much to believe that the study of Animal Behavior may rightfully assume its part of this task.
Several years ago the writer made a series of tests on two house mice which were captured in order to prevent their interference with his work with the birds. They, of course, liked the bird food, and, indeed, in one instance one mouse went so far as to open the door before the birds came down to the box.
Having taken prisoner two of these offenders I decided to test them with apparatus similar to that used by Small in his experiments I and II (Amer. Jour. Psy., XI, p. 135). The results may be gathered into a table like the following:[1]
Table I
Results of tests with two House Mice giving time taken for the larger or smaller, or both, to find a way through the sawdust into a box in which food was placed. The time in this as in all the later tables is given in minutes and seconds.
| Trial | Time | Order of Entering |
| 1 | 17: | Smaller–Larger. |
| 2 | 1:30 | Larger–Smaller |
| 3 | 2: | Larger |
| 4 | 1: | Larger |
| 5 | :45 | Smaller |
| 6 | 2: | Smaller |
The average time for the remaining thirteen tests does not fall below that for experiments 2-6 inclusive. There is the same alternation as to which first enters the box until the fifteenth test when the smaller enters first for the remainder of the series. There may be some interest for the reader in the
- ↑ These experiments were made in the Psychological Laboratory of Indiana University.
