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. LLOYD MORGAN. 



INSTINCT AND EDUCATION IN BIRDS.* 



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. 



