DISCUSSIONS ON INSTINCT 293 
when one is thus led to drink, others will follow by 
imitation, No sooner does the beak touch the water 
than, in the domestic chick, up goes the head, and 
the instinctive drinking response is shown. I have 
seen ducklings waddle through the tin repeatedly and 
not stop to drink, though I had reasons for believing 
that they were thirsty, for when I dipped the beak 
of one of them beneath the water he drank eagerly, 
and continued to do so for some time. On the other 
hand, a little moor-hen or water-hen, when I quickly 
lowered it, at about sixteen hours old, into water, drank 
so soon as its breast touched the surface. It then 
swam off with instinctive definiteness of co-ordinated 
leg-movements. 
The statement of fact (so far as my observations go) 
that I made was this: That the sight of still water 
evoked no instinctive response; but that the touch of 
water in the bill at once evoked the characteristic 
instinctive behaviour. C, Ltoyp Morgan. 
INSTINCT AND EDUCATION IN Brrps.* 
THE discussion, first provoked by the note in Science 
of 14th February, relative to the origin of instinct and 
the inheritance of acquired habitual actions, and the 
remark of Prof. Wesley Mills (p. 441) that “before 
drawing conclusions from observations on domestic 
animals, it is well to consider similar facts in connection 
with their wild congeners,” have led me to make a few 
experiments upon a fledgling of our common kingbird 
* By Prof. H. C. Bumpus,. in Science, N.S., vol. iv., No, &6, 21st 
August 1896. 
