VI OBSERVATIONS ON CHICKS 251 



though to seek protection. But as I could not supply the 

 place of the soft warm wings of the mother-hen, they suddenly 

 stood still, and when I afterwards began to imitate the voice 

 of the hen again, they took no notice. The cry " Cluck, cluck," 

 with which the hen calls her chickens, although I uttered it 

 as naturally as possible, had no effect. But the behaviour I 

 have described as caused by the imitation of the hen's chat- 

 tering was so striking that it cannot possibly be ascribed to 

 chance, especially as both chickens exhibited it at the same 

 time ; and it ought not to excite surprise, that when the 

 benefit instinctively expected was not received the behaviour 

 was not repeated, considering the decision with which the 

 young chickens act at once upon every experience. Still such 

 experiments ought to be repeated on other chickens. It is 

 also a reasonable question, whether the sitting hen may not 

 chatter sometimes on her nest, and whether the chicks may 

 not thus, even in the egg, hear something of the fowl's 

 language. Experiments therefore should also be made with 

 chicks hatched by an artificial incubator. 



Moreover, the little creatures were from the first not afraid 

 of me, but they did not willingly allow me to take hold of 

 them, and the less so as time went on, because they found 

 by experience that I sometimes thereby deprived them of 

 liberty and put theni back into their basket. As it had been 

 stated by Herr Spalding that chickens were thrown into the 

 greatest terror by a hawk, although they had never seen one 

 before, I made the experiment of trying to terrify them with 

 a sparrow-hawk stuffed with the wrings extended. They took 

 not the least notice of the object, w^hich of course does not 

 exclude the possibility of their behaving differently in presence 

 of the livincf bird. 



Up to the eighth day, in consequence of the abundance of 

 food given to them, they had lived together without jealousy 

 or strife. On this day I again gave them some earth-worms. 



