vi OBSERVATIONS ON CHICKS 253 



on our shoulders. But from glittering substances like spoons 

 and forks he will not take anything. He also runs after us 

 in the garden, but between meal- times he will be his own 

 master, and avoids the hand which tries to catch him. Many 

 times when we took a meal in the house and not in the garden, I 

 have seen him running about round the empty table at dinner- 

 time obviously expecting us : his stomach is his clock. Very 

 comical is his behaviour when he is satisfied. He sits then 

 with his crop full on the back of the garden-seat among us, 

 ruffles his feathers, and shuts his eyes, so that my children 

 when they saw this for the first time thought he was going 

 to die. But he is only struggling with sleep ; he now and 

 then cleans his feathers and skin, then puts his head in the 

 usual fashion under his left wing, and begins his mid-day 

 nap. 



Meantime he has given up his indifference to small 

 animals, and especially towards flies; at these he snaps 

 everywhere, and catches them with great skill. He has 

 never gone outside my yard and garden, although the open 

 fence offers no hindrance to his doing so. 



He appears, after eight weeks of life, like a "self-made 

 man," as a " character " who knows his objects, although he 

 has scarcely reached half the size of an adult fowl. But 

 what he is, and what he can do, he is and can through 

 the employment of the abundant powers which h,e has 

 inherited from his ancestors, and which were acquired by 

 these. 



How is it, on the other hand, conceivable that the vari- 

 ability of the germ-plasm, inherited from unicellular organ- 

 isms, in combination with continued sexual mixture, could 

 lead to such innate faculties as our chicken has shown? 



I must confess that the assumption of a variability in the 

 germ-plasm inherited from unicellular ancestors, and con- 

 tinually increased, with the effects ascribed to it by its advo- 



