252 MENTAL FACULTIES sec. 



After I had repeatedly thrown these in front of them the 

 brown chick began to worry one. Immediately the white 

 one came to seize it away from him. And so the chicks 

 pursued one another and quarrelled over every worm which 

 one of them had seized. 



On the twelfth day I took my two charges to the hen by 

 whom they had been hatched, and who was in a dove-cot with 

 her other chicks. My chicks immediately retreated from the 

 old hen, in evident terror, into a corner, while she looked on 

 them with a hostile eye. In fact, the hen only waited till I 

 had apparently gone away, and then fell upon her unknown 

 children with savage pecks. I had to take them away from their 

 mother. The two orphans soon ran about in the yard alone, 

 searching for food, showing no inclination to go through the 

 wide railing to the old hens in the fowl-run. They learned 

 to look after themselves, but kept always near the house, 

 never going far from it. One day the white one disappeared, 

 having probably fallen a victim to a cat. The brown one, 

 left alone, used to come regularly to us at meals, w^hich 

 we took in the garden, to pick up the crumbs which were 

 thrown to him. He would have nothing to do with his 

 fellows in the fowl-run, or with the old hen which was confined 

 there with his brothers and sisters and clucking after them, 

 and at night he repaired to some unknown hiding-place. 

 This behaviour of his towards his own race in comparison 

 with his behaviour towards mankind is extremely remarkable, 

 because it was the consequence of experience which therefore, 

 as with respect to the catching of flies, had conquered and 

 displaced inborn instinct. For the bird is now — it is just 

 eight weeks old — so tame, that when it wants food it suffers 

 itself to be taken up and stroked, while its brothers and 

 sisters who were brought up by the hen are extremely shy. 

 It takes food preferably from the hand, and usually perches 

 for this purpose on the back of the garden-seat between us or 



