280 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE 
INSTINCT. 
To THE EpiTor oF Science—Some remarks appended 
to my letter, published in Science No, x11, on the subject 
of Prof. Morgan’s views on “Instinct” by “The Writer of 
the Note,” in view of the importance of the subject, are 
worthy of further consideration. 
Before drawing conclusions from observations on 
domestic animals, it is well to consider similar facts in 
connection with their wild congeners, especially if such 
conclusions are of a far-reaching character, and it cannot 
be too well borne in mind that our experiments are very 
clumsy imitations of nature in a large proportion of cases. 
If food be set down in considerable quantity before 
newly-hatched chicks, and in a vessel similar to that in 
which water is usually held, they will be relatively slow 
to recognise and eat such food, but in a wild state the 
congeners of the domestic fowl, as grouse, pheasants, etc. 
do not find food or water before them in such way. 
Their food is distributed, however, much more like the 
particles we scatter before the chick than does their 
water supply resemble that of our methods. 
A young grouse would naturally get its water from 
the dew on herbage, possibly from rain-water that had 
gathered in little hollows of the ground, surface, ete. 
And when the birds approach a stream, the surface near 
is moist or wet, the particles it would naturally peck at 
would be found up to and beyond the very margin of 
the water, so that the contact of the beak with water in 
all these cases would be inevitable, and drinking would 
come about as naturally as eating. 
When “The Writer of the Note” says: “A chick 
swallows water instinctively, but must be taught to drink 
by example or accident,” the latter term evidently having 
