Maternal Behaviour in the Rat

Abstract

CRUDE and unconvincing to the psychologist as the arguments of extreme behaviourists are, there can be no question but that they have rendered a great service to psycho-biology and to psychology by the stimulus they have given to the application of experimental and objective methods of investigation in fields that have long been given over to somewhat futile theorising, speculation, and disputation. An admirable illustration of the kind of work that is now being done as a result of this stimulus is afforded by the book before us. The authors have studied, more exhaustively than has ever been done previously, one phase of the maternal behaviour of white rats the phase designated by them retrieving. They have also succeeded in devising a method by which a quantitative estimate may be obtained of what we may call the retrieving phase of the maternal instinct of rats. The word instinct is used advisedly. The authors, following an example which has lately been set by American biologists and psychologists, use the word drive. There does not seem, however, any real grounds for discarding the old word instinct in its original meaning as a translation of the Greek word. Maternal Behaviour in the Rat. By Bertold P. Wiesner Norah M. Sheard. (Biological Monographs and Manuals.) Pp. xi + 245 + 53 plates. (Edinburgh and London: Oliver and Boyd, 1933.) 12s. 6d. net.