ANIMAL BEHAVIOR. 305 



inhibitory influences. There is unmistakably a power of inhi- 

 bition strong enough to counteract the strongest motive to act 

 — the hunger of a starving animal in the presence of food. 



2. Orientation Learned by Experieiice . — In assuming that 

 the young Necturus, at the time of its first attempt to capture 

 a piece of beef, has already learned to orient itself with refer- 

 ence to external objects, I have not gone beyond the possibili- 

 ties. The animal has been out of the egg envelopes for about 

 two months. It has been confined in a glass dish about ten 

 inches in diameter, holding water about one inch in depth. 

 Its life has been about as exclusively vegetative as if it had 

 been all the while within the egg membrane, the only differ- 

 ence being that it has had room to straighten itself and to 

 move about to some extent among its fellows. It has been 

 heavily laden with food-yolk and has maintained a quiet atti- 

 tude except when disturbed by change of water. Simple as 

 the life has been, the animal has had some experience in swim- 

 ming and walking, and opportunity to use to some extent its 

 organs of orientation. The bait offered to it is something 

 totally new in its experience, but we cannot, of course, claim 

 that its behavior towards the bait is wholly uninfluenced by its 

 previous experience. 



3. Deferred Instinct. — We have to do with what Mr. Lloyd 

 Morgan has termed a " deferred " instinct, i.e., an action per- 

 formed for the first time, but not until some time after birth. 

 Mr. Morgan's remarks on the first dive of a young moor hen^ 

 bring out very clearly the possible influence of experience in 

 the case of such deferred instincts. 



Mr. Morgan says : 



In the case of such an instinctive procedure of the deferred type 

 as that presented by the diving of a young moor hen, though, on the 

 first occasion of its performance, the congenital automatism predomi- 

 nates, yet it is difficult to believe and is iti itself improbable that the indi- 

 vidual experience of the young bird does not, even on the first occasion, 

 exercise some influence on the way in which the dive is performed. If we 

 desire to reach a true interpretation of the facts, we must realize the 

 fact that an activity may be of mixed origin. And if we distinguish 



1 Habit and Instinct, pp. 136, 137. 



