IN THE SHETLANDS 291 
or cupboard-love, in the other? Personally, I believe 
that both of these two latter brain-processes have to 
do in producing the result in question, but that the 
first—a tenderness, namely, on the part of the old 
birds—is the preponderating influence. We must re- 
member that all these childless birds upon the ledges 
—and when I first came the ledges were crowded— 
must have had children with them only a short time 
ago. When, therefore, a chick runs suddenly up to 
them, just as their own chick used to, I can under- 
stand a train of recent memories being so strongly 
revived as to cause them to act as they do. I did, 
in fact, to my own senses, notice something in the 
manner of these non-parent birds thus acting parentally 
—in a certain degree, that is to say—which was differ- 
ent to that of the true parents. A certain surprise, I 
thought, was exhibited at first, and then the bird 
seemed to fall into the old train of things. If, indeed, 
as Iam much inclined to believe, the mere bringing 
of a fish to the ledge may raise, for a time, in the 
mind of the bird that brings it, the hallucinatory 
image or impression of a chick that is not there, it is 
not wonderful that the actual running up to it of 
a chick not its own, should cause it to feel and act as 
though it were the true parent. 
What, then, has been the origin of sympathy? Even 
amongst ourselves, to feel with a person (cw rados) is 
to feel very much as though one were that person, 
and the effort of reason which assures us to the 
contrary might well be beyond the power of an 
