THE BROODING INSTINCT IN THE DOMESTIC FOWL 267 



tion of nesting site and building nest (often accompanied by- 

 fighting instinct); (4) egg-laying; (5) incubation — including 

 care of eggs such as shielding, rolling, cleaning and covering 

 (fear often completely blocked by brooding instinct) ; (6) care 



of young in nest ; (7) care and incidental education of 



young when out of nest; guarding, feeding, play and other in- 

 stinctive acts; (8) fall migration." In the domestic fowl, in 

 spite of its long domestication and sophistication in regard to 

 such unnatural things as trapnests and the like, all the instinctive 

 acts enumerated in this list, with the exception of its first and 

 last alone, occur with greater or less degrees of complexity and 

 precision. Even such matters as sexual selection (preferential 

 or assortive mating) and nest building, which domestication 

 might be supposed to have done away with long since, may be 

 observed in the poultry house and yard under proper conditions. 

 We are, however, at present concerned only with five in the series, 

 that is, the instinct for incubating the eggs, or of brooding. 



Herrick (joe. cit.) further says: ' Beginning at 2, 3, or 4, 

 according to circumstances, the cycle may be repeated once or 

 oftener within the season." In another paper the same author 

 (4) discusses a number of interesting cases of repetition and 

 blending of the different members in this series of cyclical in- 

 stincts. In certain of the domestic races of poultry, the repe- 

 tition of the part of the cycle involving at least items 3, 4 and 5 

 within one season is of such frequent occurrence as to be regarded 

 as a more or less normal condition. Whether or not the same 

 is true of the wild species of Gallus it is impossible to say with 

 certainty. Apparently no systematic study of the mating and 

 breeding behavior of the wild Gallus has ever been made. The 

 information to be gained from casual notes of travelers or hunters 

 is meager and indefinite. Tegetmeier (9) in a discussion of the 

 habits of the jungle fowl quotes from a ' well-known Indian 

 ornithologist who has published the results of his observations 

 in The Field under the signature of Ornithognomon ' to the 

 following effect (loc. cit. pp. 259-260): "The period for incu- 

 bation varies according to locality, but is generally at the begin- 

 ning of the rains — i.e., June. I have seen eggs, however, in 

 March, and Jerdon says the hen breeds as early as in January 

 and as late as July. She selects for this purpose some secret 

 thicket in the most retired and dense part of the jungle, scraping 



