PARE LV: 
DISCUSSIONS ON INSTINCT. 
Pror. C. Luoyp MorGAn on INSTINCT. 
To THE EpiTor oF Science—In an account of a discus- 
sion on “ Instinct,” given in Science of 14th February, 
Prof. Morgan is reported thus: “He described his own 
interesting experiments with chicks and ducklings, and 
held that these and other evidence tend to show that 
instincts are not perfected under the guidance of 
intelligence, and then inherited. A chick will peck 
instinctively at food, but must be taught to drink 
[Italics mine]. Chicks have learned to drink for 
countless generations, but the acquired action has not 
become instinctive.” 
In one of a series of papers now in the Press on 
“The Psychic Development of Young Animals and its 
Physical Correlation,’ I have given in detail an account 
of a study of the pigeon and the chick. It so happens 
that this very question of drinking by chicks has been 
especially noted, and I find a record of one observation 
to the effect that a newly-hatched chick, pecking at the 
drops on rim of a vessel containing water, accidentally 
got its beak into the liquid, whereupon it at once 
raised its head and drank perfectly well in the usual 
fashion for fowls. Was this by teaching or by instinct ? 
Later, the chicks seem to peck and drink, sometimes 
on seeing the mother do so. The act seems to be, in 
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