EDUCATION IN THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 527 



EDUCATION IN" THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 



By M. CHARLES LETOURNEAU. 



LIKE man, animals, especially those of the higher orders, are 

 born with a latent, inherited education, the effects of which 

 are manifested in the course of individual development. Our organs, 

 for instance, which have been slowly built up during the evolution 

 of the various specific types, act of themselves, each in its own way. 

 They have their own memory. The digestive, circulatory, and 

 respiratory organs, the senses, etc., discharge their functions spon- 

 taneously and without waiting for lessons from any master. The 

 young animal left to its own impulses usually comes very soon to 

 take care of itself in the great world, to avoid its enemies, and find 

 food and a comfortable bed. Except in species that live in larger or 

 smaller societies, parents drive away their young as soon as they 

 have arrived at a stage in which they can take care of themselves. 

 This fact is easily observable in birds, even when they are domesti- 

 cated. The solicitous care of turtledoves for their young gives way 

 to pecking and wing striking as soon as the latter are developed. 

 Eagles drive their grown-up young from the nest, and even from the 

 neighborhood. Some other species take care for the future of their 

 offspring, and before sending them away teach them to fly, or swim, 

 or hunt, or fish. Dureau de la Malle saw falcons, high up in the air, 

 drop dead mice and swallows in order to teach their young to spring 

 upon their prey when in rapid flight, and to estimate distances ; and 

 when the little hawklets were somewhat larger, they dropped living 

 birds instead of dead game. American crested ducks teach their 

 young to find seeds and to snap at flies and aquatic insects. 



It is generally the female that exercises this care for her offspring, 

 while the male concerns himself little about the matter. The female 

 wild duck leads her brood to the water, and takes care to choose 

 places of no very great depth for this first lesson, and trains the little 

 ones to hunt flies, mosquitoes, and beetles. The female of the eider 

 duck gently carries her ducklings one by one in her beak, escorts 

 them to the deep water, and teaches them to dive for fish. When 

 they are tired she glides under them, takes them on her back, and 

 carefully carries them to the shore. It is undoubtedly very largely 

 by virtue of instinct and ancestral education that birds swim or fly, 

 and the mother has only to invite them to the act by her example; 

 but, for a more complete training, the lessons are very useful, if not 

 necessary. These lessons given by the parent birds to their young 

 are the more impressive because birds have a vocal language, devel- 

 oped to a certain extent, and the example is enforced by admonitions, 



