e second button, the first one was removed, but he still went
to the place where it had been and fingered about there. What he had
observed was chiefly the place to work at in order to open the door.
We must grant that animals observe locations, but most of their
learning is by doing and not by observing.

Here is another experiment designed to test the ability of animals to
learn by observation. The experimenter takes two cats, one having
mastered a certain puzzle box, the other not, and places the untrained
cat where it can watch the trained one do its trick. The trained cat
performs repeatedly for the other's benefit, and is then taken away
and the untrained cat put into the puzzle box. But he has derived no
benefit from what has gone on before his eyes, and must learn by trial
{319} and error, the same as any other cat; he does not even learn any
more quickly than he otherwise would have done.

The same negative results are obtained even with monkeys, but the
chimpanzee shows some signs of learning by observation. One chimpanzee
having learned to extract a banana from a long tube by pushing it out
of the further end with a stick which the experimenter had kindly left
close by, another chimpanzee was placed where he could watch the first
one's performance and did watch it closely. Then the first animal was
taken away and the second given a chance. He promptly took the stick
and got the banana, without, however, imitating the action of the
first animal exactly, but pulling the banana towards him till he could
reach it. This has been called learning by imitation, but might better
be described as learning by observation.

Such behavior, quite rare among animals, is common in human children,
who are very observant of what older people do, and imitate them on
the first opportunity, though often this comes after an interval. The
first time a child speaks a new word is usually not right after he has
heard it. When, on previous occasions, he has heard this word, he has
not attempted to copy it, but now he brings it out of himself. He has
not acquired the word by direct imitation, evidently, but by what has
been called "delayed imitation", which consists in observation at the
time followed later by attempts to do what has been observed.
Observation does not altogether relieve the child of the necessity of
learning by trial and error, for often his first imitations are pretty
poor attempts; but observation gives him a good s