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 with a 

 very fine and almost limpid paste, made with biscuit, 

 Spanish wine, and sugar. They dipped their tongue 

 in it, and when their appetite was satisfied they 

 fluttered and chanted. 1 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 a cord 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 a few of 

 the acquired actions of birds, originating either in 

 P 



