TRAINING OF YOUNG BIRDS. 169 
restraint, they used to eat and sleep with their 
brood. I have often seen all the four sitting upon 
Father Montdidier’s finger, singing as if they had 
been perched upon a branch. He fed them witha 
very fine and almost limpid paste, made with biscuit, 
Spanish wine, and sugar. ‘I'hey dipped their tongue 
in it, and when their appetite was satisfied they 
fluttered and chanted. I never saw anything more 
lovely than these four pretty little birds, which flew 
about the house and attended the call of their 
foster-father. He preserved them in this way five 
or six months, and we hoped soon to see them 
breed, when Father Montdidier, having forgotten 
one night to tie the cage in which they were roost- 
ed by acord that hung from the ceiling, to keep 
them from the rats, had the vexation in the morn- 
ing to find that they had disappeared; they had 
been devoured.” 
Training of Young Birds by their Parents.—By 
far the greater number of the actions of animals 
appear to be performed without previous instruc- 
tion, in a manner which, being inexplicable in the 
present state of knowledge, is designated by the 
terms instinct and instinctive, meaning that the mo- 
tives to any particular movement or action, as well 
as the mode of execution, originate in the animal 
spontaneously, without the series of reasoning, or 
thinking and determining, which we employ in sim- 
ilar cases. Thus a frog is said to swim instinctively 
in water; that is, it requires no training, no in- 
struction in the art of swimming, no more than we 
do in the process of breathing; and the same may 
be said with regard to the swimming of most other 
animals, even those least accustomed to water, 
few being unable to swim except man, who re- 
quires training and instruction for that purpose. 
It is not our design to enter here upon the difficult 
subject of instinct farther than to point out afew of 
the acquired actions a birds, originating either in 
