562 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



was " no road that way." It leaped over the smaller obstacles that lay 

 in its path, and ran round the larger, reaching the mother in as nearly 

 a straight line as the nature of the ground would permit. Thus it 

 would seem that, prior to experience, the eye at least the eye of the 

 chicken perceives the primary qualities of the external world, all ar- 

 guments of the purely analytical school of psychology to the contrary, 

 notwithstanding. 



Not less decisive were experiments on hearing. Chickens hatched 

 and kept in the dai'k for a day or two, on being placed in the light 

 nine or ten feet from a box in which a brooding hen was concealed, 

 after standing chirping for a minute or two, uniformly set off straight 

 to the box in answer to the call of the hen which they had never seen 

 and never before heard. This they did struggling through grass and 

 over rough ground, when not able to stand steadily on their legs. 

 Again, chickens that from the first had been denied the use of their 

 eyes, by having hoods drawn over their heads while yet in the shell, 

 were, while thus blind, made the subject of experiment. These, when 

 left to themselves, seldom made a forward step, their movements were 

 round and round and backward ; but, when placed within five or six 

 feet of the hen-mother, they, in answer to her call, became much more 

 lively, began to make little forward journeys, and soon followed her 

 by sound alone, though of course blindly. Another experiment con- 

 sisted in rendering chickens deaf for a time by sealing their ears with 

 several folds of gum-paper before they had escaped from the shell. 

 These, on having their ears opened when two or three days old, and 

 being placed within call of the mother, concealed in a box or on the 

 other side of a door, after turning round a few times ran straight to 

 the spot whence came the first sound they had ever heard. Clearly, of 

 these chickens it cannot be said that sounds were to them at first but 

 meaningless sensations. 



One or two observations favorable to the opinion that animals have 

 an instinctive knowledge of their enemies may be taken for what they 

 are worth. "When twelve days old, one of my little proteges, running 

 about beside me, gave the peculiar chirp whereby they announce the 

 approach of danger. On looking up, a sparrow-hawk was seen hover- 

 ing at a great height overhead. Again, a young hawk was made to 

 fly over a hen with her first brood of chickens, then about a week old. 

 In the twinkling of an eye, most of the chickens were hid among 

 grass and bushes. And scarcely had the hawk touched the ground, 

 about twelve yards from where the hen had been sitting, when she fell 

 qpon it, and would soon have killed it outright. A young turkey gave 

 even more striking evidence. "When ten days old it heard the voice 

 of a. hawk for the first time, and just beside it. Like an arrow from 

 the bow it darted off in the opposite direction, and, crouched in a cor- 

 ner, remained for ten minutes motionless and dumb with fear. Out 

 of a vast number of experiments with chickens and bees, though the 



