106 Mr. C. F. M. Swynnerton on 



Two factors remain : parental education and personal 

 experience. The latter is certainly by far the most important 

 of the two, and we have seen in these experiments that birds 

 readily profit by experience. But that parental influence is 

 an important and long-lasting factor is suggested by the fact 

 that so many young birds continue to go about with their 

 parents almost up to the commencement of the next breeding- 

 season, and by the most interesting attempt at dissuasion 

 from eating a very low-grade insect by the older Irrisor in 

 experiment 506. Here the young bird must have been 

 nearly a year old. In this particular instance, the younger 

 bird did not allow itself to be persuaded quite at once, but 

 that birds do allow themselves to be influenced by the 

 acceptances and rejections of others I have many times seen. 

 It has happened with other birds, as it did with Loplioceros 

 above, when two birds have been caged together, that one 

 has gone so far as to offer an insect of which he was (one 

 supposes) doubtful to the other while keeping a tight hold 

 on it, and that he has swallowed it down himself if the other 

 wanted it and thrown it away if it ignored it. I had for 

 some time a hand-reared Hirnndo puella caged with a 

 captured //. rustica, and it was almost pathetic to see how 

 the former watched the latter and relied on its acceptances 

 and refusals. 



The whole relations of old birds to young in the matter of 

 food is a most interesting question for study. I have myself 

 watched wild Bulbuls feeding their young, and I came to the 

 conclusion that there the old birds captured what they were 

 hungry enough for themselves. If the young bird refused 

 the offering (as it sometimes did, so early does a knowledge 

 of the qualities of prey and visual recognition of it com- 

 mence) it was taken back and eaten by the old bird. 

 Similarly, in experiment 502, Irrisor A gave CatopsUia and 

 locusts to C that he was hungry enough for himself, and 

 took back and ate what C did not want. Yet he deprived D 

 just afterwards of the greater dainty SpMngomorj^ha ! In 

 experiment 503, A gave C Precis arta.cia and natalensis that 

 he had been eagerly awaiting himself. But on C/s holding 

 the P. natalensis without eating it, " A again seized it with 



