NATURAL HISTORY STUDIES 



and it is characteristic of instinctive capacity that 

 it is hereditarily entailed. 



An unhatched lapwing may be heard saying 

 " pee-wit " from within the egg. This is its 

 distinctive call-note, and its utterance appears to be 

 instinctive quite independent of instruction or 

 imitation. Chicks reared in an incubator have the 

 usual vocabulary. This, again, is characteristic 

 of instinctive behaviour, that it does not require 

 education or example or practice, though it may be 

 improved thereby. Instinctive behaviour is a 

 complicated answer-back that has a high degree 

 of perfection from the very first. 



The mother Sphex-wasp stocks each of the cells 

 in her nest with three or four paralysed crickets. 

 On the under side of one of these (turned on its 

 back) she fixes an egg, out of which in three or four 

 days a delicate worm-like larva is hatched. This 

 tiny creature bores a hole through the cricket's 

 armour, makes its way into the paralysed body, 

 and proceeds to devour the tissues. In a week or 

 so, having exhausted the food supply, it goes out 

 by the aperture by which it entered, and proceeds 

 to enjoy another cricket. In about twelve days it 

 has eaten all its larder. Its behaviour is strikingly 

 instinctive. 



The way in which some new-born mammals imme- 

 diately proceed to suck their mother illustrates an 

 instinctive endowment. Each little pig the moment 

 that he is born hurries over his mother's hind legs, 

 and, in the second second of his outdoor life, has a teat 

 in his mouth. Newly -born pigs also show instinctive 



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