HEREDITY 87 



much sooner than those which never had a mother 

 hen to look after them. This I judged to arise from 

 the fussiness and anxiety of the mother in the early 

 days of their life. She sounds her warning and 

 danger-notes so frequently that the emotions of the 

 chicks are perpetually stirred; and they, too, become 

 fearful and suspicious, and frequently sound an alarm 

 without any apparent reason. With hand-bred chicks 

 this is the reverse, and the alarm and danger-notes 

 are uttered much later in life and very much less 

 often ; and the alarm-notes of other fowls do not 

 seem to affect them nearly so much as they do 

 chicks reared by a hen. The conclusion I came to 

 on this head was, that though the sounds emitted by 

 chicks are undoubtedly instinctive, and, at first, of 

 little or no value as warning cries to others, they do 

 soon acquire a suggestive value of danger, in the 

 minds of other chicks, but that this emotional im- 

 port is more the result of association and experience 

 than something inherited." 



Chicks hatched in incubators, however, will 

 utter distinct alarm-notes, even when but a day old. 

 The Rev. H. A. Macpherson, whose contributions to 

 ornithological science are well known, writes of some 

 young golden plover, hatched indoors, that as soon 

 as they could run piped like the old birds, whose 



