424 Animal Life and Intelligence. 



river ; he is only conscious of a desire to pick the water- 

 lilies near the further bank. 



Birds, especially those which are called proecoces, in 

 contradistinction from the altrices, which are hatched in a 

 helpless, callow condition, come into the world prepared at 

 once to perform complex activities. Mr. Spalding writes,* 

 " A chicken that had been made the subject of experiments 

 on hearing [having been blindfolded at birth] was un- 

 hooded when nearly three days old. For six minutes it 

 sat chirping and looking about it ; at the end of that time 

 it followed with its head and eyes the movements of a fly 

 twelve , inches distant; at ten minutes it made a peck at 

 its own toes, and the next instant it made a vigorous dart 

 at the fly, which had come within reach of its neck, and 

 seized and swallowed it at the first stroke; for seven 

 minutes more it sat calling and looking about it, when a 

 hive-bee, coming sufficiently near, was seized at a dart, 

 and thrown some distance much disabled. For twenty 

 minutes it sat on the spot where its eyes had been unveiled 

 without attempting to walk a step. It was then placed on 

 rough ground, within sight and call of a hen with a brood 

 of its own age. After standing chirping for about a minute, 

 it started off towards the hen, displaying as keen a percep- 

 tion of the qualities of the outer world as it was ever likely 

 to possess in after-life. It never required to knock its 

 head against a stone to discover that there was ' no road 

 that way.' It leaped over the smaller obstacles that lay in 

 its path, and ran round the larger, reaching the mother in 

 as nearly straight a line as the nature of the ground would 

 permit. This, let it be remembered, was the first time it 

 had ever walked by sight. "f 



Mr. Spalding's experiments also proved that, even 



* Macmillan' s Magazine, February, 1873. Professor Eimer, in his " Organic 

 Evolution " (English translation, p. 245), narrates similar experiences. 



t Mr. W. Larden states, in Nature (vol. xlii.), that his brother extracted, 

 from the oviduct of a Vivora de la Cruz snake in the West Indies, two young 

 snakelets six inches long. Both, though thus from their mother's oviduct 

 untimely ripped, threatened to strike, and made the burring noise with the 

 tail, characteristic of the snake. 



