PAET IV. 



DISCUSSIONS ON INSTINCT. 

 PROF. C. LLOYD MORGAN ON INSTINCT. 



To THE EDITOR OF Science, In an account of a discus- 

 sion on " Instinct," given in Science of 14th February, 

 Prof. Morgan is reported thus : " He described his own 

 interesting experiments with chicks and ducklings, and 

 held that these and other evidence tend to show that 

 instincts are not perfected under the guidance of 

 intelligence, and then inherited. A chick will peck 

 instinctively at food, but must be taught to drink 

 [Italics mine]. Chicks have learned to drink for 

 countless generations, but the acquired action has not 

 become instinctive." 



In one of a series of papers now in the Press on 

 " The Psychic Development of Young Animals and its 

 Physical Correlation," I have given in detail an account 

 of a study of the pigeon and the chick. It so happens 

 that this very question of drinking by chicks has been 

 especially noted, and I find a record of one observation 

 to the effect that a newly -hatched chick, pecking at the 

 drops on rim of a vessel containing water, accidentally 

 got its beak into the liquid, whereupon it at once 

 raised its head and drank perfectly well in the usual 

 fashion for fowls. Was this by teaching or by instinct ? 



Later, the chicks seem to peck and drink, sometimes 

 on seeing the mother do so. The act seems to be, in 



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