PuRNELL. — On True Instincts of Animals. 35 



an outhouse which contained a doe rabbit with a very young 

 family. The doe left the young ones, and the latter, as soon 

 as they smelt the ferret, began to crawl about in so energetic 

 a manner as to leave no doubt that the cause of the com- 

 motion was fear, and not merely the discomfort arising from 

 the temporary absence of the mother. This fear is not, how- 

 ever, universal amongst young animals, as is proved by the 

 result of some experiments recently made by Professor Lloyd 

 Morgan, and related by him in Nature (11th October, 1891). 

 He put some young pheasants, about a day old, which had 

 been artificially hatched out of the egg by means of an incu- 

 bator, in close proximity to a fox-terrier ; but, although the dog 

 was keen to get at them, and trembling with excitement in 

 every limb, the young birds exhibited no signs of fear. They 

 also showed no fear of a large blindworm, but pecked at its 

 forked tongue, its eye, and tail. Mr. Douglas Spalding made 

 a number of interesting experiments upon the young of our 

 domesticated animals, the result of which he published in 

 Macmillwi s Magazine, which went to show that chickens, 

 young ducks, and pigs, and other newly-born animals, are 

 capable of performing many acts apparently betokening in- 

 telligence without instruction. He found that very young 

 chickens were able to pick up small specks of food and scrape 

 in search of food ; that newly-born pigs sought the mother's 

 teat almost immediately after birth; and that, on placing four 

 ducklings a day old in the open ah- for the first time, one of 

 them almost immediately snapped at and caught a fly on the 

 wing : all of the experiments being conducted in such a manner 

 as to preclude the possibility of the young animal having learned 

 to do these things by imitation. In considering these experi- 

 ments, however, it must be borne in mind, as I have pointed 

 out in my treatise on " The Intelligence of Animals," that the 

 young fowl, duck, or pig comes into the world with its in- 

 telhgence pretty fully developed — although it afterwards gains 

 wisdom from experience — and all such acts as those just men- 

 tioned are intelligent acts, not acts performed in an unvarying 

 fashion, but acts varying with the surrounding circumstances. 

 There seems, indeed, nothing more remarkable in a chicken 

 scraping up the ground in search of food than in its walkmg, 

 and chickens do not require to be taught how to walk. 



What I have denominated true instincts suggest an analogy 

 with reflex actions. Herbert Spencer, indeed, regards instinct 

 as compound reflex action, by which I understand him to 

 mean a sequence of reflex actions manifested in immediate 

 succession to one another; while Dr. Eomanes regards such so- 

 called instincts as the hive-making instinct of the honey-bee 

 as being reflex actions into which is imported the element of 

 consciousness. It seems to me, however, that singleness is of 



