xin INSTINCT AND REASON 329 



plastic. A particular action may be partly instinctive 

 and parti)' intelligent. Professor Lloyd Morgan has 

 contributed a good deal to the understanding of the 

 question. 1 lie took some eggs from under a sitting 

 hen and put them in an incubator, and when the 

 chicks emerged from the eggs, he experimented on 

 them. They pecked at almost everything, no doubt 

 by instinct. But they had to learn to peck straight, 

 and to learn to judge distance, so as to know whether 

 a piece of food was within range of their beaks. 

 Experience taught them that burning cigarette-ends 

 were not good for food. When pieces of dark 

 crimson worsted-wool were first substituted for the 

 worms they had so much enjoyed, they were 

 swallowed greedily, but afterwards they were viewed 

 with much distrust and generally rejected. All his 

 life long a bird is learning. An old Heron is far 

 more knowing than a young one. The young Curlew 

 has to learn much from his seniors and by experience 

 before he attains to the proper Curlew standard of 

 wariness. On the other hand, the Cuckoo is to a 

 great extent able to dispense with experience and 

 instruction. For it can hardly be supposed that an 

 old bird takes a young bird in hand and teaches her 

 what to do with her egg, or that the young bird goes 

 through a process of learning to find a nest and 

 entrust her egg to a foster-mother. Birds which arc 

 hatched from the egg by the sun, must be born with 

 some ready-made knowledge of the world. Even 

 teaching and experience can only awaken powers 

 that are born in the bird. We often find him at the 

 1 See his article in the Fortnightly Review for August, 1893. 



