The visual discrimination method, which proved invaluable as a means of measuring the rapidity of habit formation, proved equally serviceable in the measurement of the permanency or duration of habits. Memory tests for discrimination habits were made as follows. After a dancer had been trained in the discrimination box so that it could choose the correct electric-box, white, red, blue, or green as it might be, in three successive daily series of ten tests each, it was permitted to remain for a certain length of time without training and without opportunity to exercise its habit of visual discrimination and choice. At the expiration of the rest interval, as we may designate the period during which the habit was not in use, the mouse was placed in the discrimination box under precisely the same conditions in which it had been trained and was given a series of ten memory tests with the box to be chosen alternately on the right and on the left. In order that the entire series of ten tests, and sometimes two such series given on consecutive days, might be available as indications of the duration of a habit, the mouse was permitted to enter and pass through either of the electric-boxes without receiving a shock. Had the shock been given as punishment for a wrong choice, it is obvious that only the first test of the memory series would be of value as an indication of the existence of a previously acquired habit. Even under the conditions of no shock and no stop or hindrance the first test of each memory series is of preeminent importance, for the mouse tends to persist in choosing either the side or the visual condition (sometimes one, sometimes the other) which it chooses in the first test. If the wrong box is chosen to begin with, mistakes are likely to continue because of the lack of punishment; in this case the animal discriminates, but there is no evidence that it remembers the right box. Likewise, if the right electric- box is chosen in the first test, correct choices may continue simply because the animal has discovered that it can safely enter that particular box; again, the animal discriminates without depending necessarily upon its earlier experience. I have occasionally observed a series of ten correct choices, made on the basis of an accidental right start, followed by another series in which almost every choice was wrong, because the animal happened to start wrong. As the results of my tests of memory are of such a nature that they cannot advantageously be averaged, I have arranged in Table 48 a number of typical measurements of the duration of visual discrimination habits. In this table I have indicated the number and age of the individual tested, the habit of discrimination which had been acquired, the length of the rest interval, the result of the first test (right or wrong), and the number of errors made in each series of ten memory tests. TABLE 48 MEASUREMENTS OF THE DURATION OF A HABIT Memory