1 62 NATURAL SCIENCE. March, 



these experiments many times and with a considerable variety of 

 species, and, while confirming many of Mr. Spalding's observations 

 and conclusions, has shown that those here referred to are erroneous. 

 More important still, he has shown exactly where and why the 

 conclusions arrived at are erroneous, and has thus afforded most 

 valuable guidance to future experimenters in this interesting enquiry. 

 Some examples of these corrections are the following. 



Mr. Spalding noticed a difference in the behaviour of young chicks 

 to flies and to bees, and concluded that they " gave evidence of 

 instinctive fear of these sting-bearing insects." This, if true, would 

 be very important, since it would show an intuitive perception of the 

 dangerous character of a special insect, and if of one, presumably of all 

 common dangerous or hurtful objects, antecedent to experience. But 

 the whole series of observations made by Professor Morgan himself, 

 as well as those made by other good observers, shows that they have 

 no such perception of the qualities of objects. They pick up stones as 

 well as grain, bits of red worsted as well as worms, gaudy-coloured 

 inedible caterpillars as well as those which are edible. They do not 

 recognise water till they have felt it, and they do not know that water 

 is drinkable till contact with the beak sets up the nervous and 

 muscular reactions of drinking. By a series of careful experiments 

 Professor Lloyd Morgan shows that young chicks have no fear of bees 

 as bees, but merely because they are large and unusual. They are 

 equally suspicious of a large fly or beetle, and, though eating small 

 worms greedily, are afraid of a large one. And when the chicks were 

 a few days old, and were no longer afraid of large flies, they showed no 

 fear even of wasps, when presented to them for the first time. 



Very similar is the correction of Spalding's statements that his 

 young chicks gave the danger-signal when a hawk was flying high 

 overhead, and that a young turkey showed equal alarm when a young 

 hawk, kept in a cupboard, uttered a shrill sound ; whence he concluded 

 that the fear of birds of prey, whether seen or heard, was instinctive. 

 For it is now shown that any strange object or any unusual sound 

 causes exactly similar alarm when first seen or heard by any kind of 

 young birds, and Mr. Hudson, of La Plata fame, came to a similar 

 conclusion. Other cases which have been thought to prove instinctive 

 dread of enemies in various young animals are shown to be explicable 

 on similar principles ; any sight, or sound, or smell, very different 

 from what they have been accustomed to, alarms them, and they 

 learn what are really dangerous either through the actions of their 

 parents or by their own personal experience. 



But, though young birds and mammals do not possess instincts 

 which enable them to discriminate between objects that may be useful 

 and those that may be hurtful to them, they often possess the most 

 wonderful acuteness of the senses and powers of co-ordinated muscular 

 action, which enable them rapidly to acquire the knowledge that is 

 essential to them. The young chick only a few hours out of the shell 



