Experiments were made with chicks in several ways. They were, for example, placed in pens, from which, in each case, “there was only one possible way of escape, to see if they would learn it more quickly when another chick did the thing several times before their eyes. The method was to give some chicks their first trial with an imitation possibility, and their second without, while others were given their first trial without and their second with. If the ratio of the average time of the first trial to the average time of the second is smaller in the first class than it is in the second class, we may find evidence of this sort of influence by imitation. Though imitation may not be able to make an animal do what he would otherwise not do, it may make him do _quicker_ a thing he would have done sooner or later anyway. As a fact, the ratio is _much longer_. This is due to the fact that a chick, when in a pen with another chick, is not afflicted by the discomfort of loneliness, and so does not try to get out. So the other chick, who is continually being put in with him to teach him the way out, really prolongs his stay in. This factor destroys the value of these quantitative experiments, and I do not,” says Mr. Thorndike, “insist upon them as evidence against imitation, though they certainly offer none for it.” Chicks, from sixteen to thirty days old, were also placed in boxes from which escape was open to them by such acts as pecking at the door, stepping on a platform, or pecking at a tack. The method of experiment was to put a chick in, leave him from sixty to eighty seconds, then put in another who knew the act, and on his performing it to let both escape. No cases were counted unless the imitator apparently saw the other do the thing. After about every ten such chances to learn the act, the imitator was left in alone for ten minutes. Out of thirteen cases tabulated only once was the act performed, in spite of the ample chance for imitation. “I have no hesitation,” adds Mr. Thorndike, “in declaring this one’s act in stepping on the platform the result of mere accident, and am sure that any one who had watched the experiments would agree.”