The Instinctive Reactions of Young Chicks 157 



of these pieces, - - one each of yellow, red, orange, green, 

 blue and black (on the white ground) or white (on the black). 

 They were in a row about half an inch apart. The chicks 

 had been in darkness for all but three or four hours of their 

 life so far. During those few hours the incubator had been 

 illuminated and the chicks had that much chance to learn 

 color. 



The eight chicks were put, one at a time, on the sheet of 

 cardboard facing the colored spots. Count was kept of the 

 number of times that they pecked at each spot and, of 

 course, they were watched to see whether they would peck 

 at all at random. In the experiments with the white back- 

 ground all the colors were reacted to (i.e. pecked at) ex- 

 cept black (but the letters on a newspaper were pecked at by 

 the same chicks the same day). One of the chicks pecked 

 at all five, one at four, three at three, one at two and one at 

 yellow only. These differences are due probably to acci- 

 dental position or movements. Taking the sums of the re- 

 actions to each color-spot we get the following table : 



I should attach no importance whatever to the quantita- 

 tive estimate given in the table. The only fact of value so 



1 This double rating is necessary because of the fact that the chick often 

 gives several distinct pecks in a single reaction. The ' times reacted to ' 

 mean the number of different times that the chicks noticed the color. 



