Prompt Action Required, i6i 



now. Their very existence is proof of Instinct as 

 a gift, and not as the result of experience, — an In- 

 stinct, as perfect in the beginning as now ; for an 

 experience, without the Instinct first given as a 

 condition, is impossible, from the very structure of 

 those hoof-bearing tribes, which can give their 

 young no aid whatever, in securing food. 



Among birds, as we have noticed in another 

 connection, we have beautiful examples of the in- 

 stinct of the young responsive to the instinct of the 

 mother. Many birds are hatched in a very imma- 

 ture state. They can neither fly, nor walk, nor see. 

 All they have strength to do, is to raise the head 

 and open the bill ; and this they all do every time 

 the mother lights upon the nest. They do it at 

 once ; it is all they need to do ; but this they must 

 do, or die. There is no time for them to learn by 

 experience, — they must be ready to do the right 

 thing at once, of their own accord. And there was 

 no better chance for any ancestor to learn by expe- 

 rience. This habit, common to all kinds of young 

 birds hatched in an immature state, could not be 

 an acquired habit ; but must be something given 

 as independently of any agency of ancestors, as the 

 growth of bone or the arrangement of muscles. 



A marvellous thing it is, that the mother bird, 

 when the brood is numerous, should be able rightly 

 to divide her favors. If she is guided by sight at 

 all, there must be wonderful acuteness of vision, 

 that enables Woodpeckers and Wrens, in their cov- 

 ered nests, and Kingfishers and Bank-swallows, in 

 their deep holes in the earth, to discern one of theif 

 young from the other. 



