98 WALLACE CRAIG. 



which a young male dove locates a nesting site for the first time. 

 The first thing the observer sees is that the dove, while standing 

 on his perch, spontaneously assumes the nest-calling attitude, 

 his body tilted forward, head down, as if his neck and breast 

 were already touching the hollow of a nest (incipient consumma- 

 tory action), and in this attitude he sounds the nest-call. But 

 he shows dissatisfaction, as if the bare perch were not a comfor- 

 table situation for this nest-dedicating attitude. He shifts 

 about until he finds a corner which more or less fits his body 

 while in the tilted posture; he is seldom satisfied with his first 

 corner, but tries another and another. If now an appropriate 

 nest-box or a ready-made nest is put into his cage, this inex- 

 perienced dove does not recognize it as a nest, but sooner or 

 later he tries it, as he has tried all other places, for nest-calling, 

 and in such trial the nest evidently gives him a strong and satis- 

 fying stimulation (the appeted stimulus) which no other situation 

 has given him. In the nest his attitude becomes extreme; he 

 abandons himself to an orgy of nest-calling (complete consumma- 

 tory action), turning now this way and now that in the hollow, 

 palpating the straws with his feet, wings, breast, neck, and beak, 

 and rioting in the wealth of new, luxurious stimuli. He no longer 

 wanders restlessly in search of new nesting situations, but re- 

 mains satisfied with his present highly stimulating nest. 



3. Fetching straws to the nest is apparently due to an appetite 

 for building them into the nest. The dove has an innate ten- 

 dency to pick up straws, and an innate tendency to build them 

 into the nest (consummatory reaction) ; but it has apparently no 

 innate tendency to carry a straw to the nest, no innate "chain" 

 of reflexes. When an experienced bird finds a straw he seizes 

 it repeatedly and toys with it, sometimes making movements 

 resembling those by which he would build the straw into the 

 nest. He seems thus to get up an appetite for building the straw 

 in, and when this appetite is sufficiently aroused he flies to the 

 nest, guided by associative memory, and performs the consum- 

 matory reaction completely. A young female, no. 70, which I 

 observed picking up a straw for the first (?) time, on her 54th day, 

 showed the lack of a "chain reflex." For she continued toying 

 with the straw an excessively long time, not carrying it at all, 



