164 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS. 



the first time, one of tliem almost immediately snapped at 

 and caught a fly on the wing. More interesting, however, is 

 the deliberate art of catching flies practised by the turkey. 

 When not a day and a half old I observed the young turkey 

 already spoken of slowly pointing its beak at flies and other 

 small insects without actually pecking at them. In doing 

 this, its head could be seen to shake like a hand that is 

 attempted to be held steady by a visible effort. This I ob- 

 served and recorded when I did not understand its meaning. 

 For it was not until after, that I found it to be the invariable 

 habit of the turkey, when it sees a fly settled on any object, 

 to steal on the unwary insect with slow and measured step 

 until sufficiently near, when it advances its head very slowly 

 and steadily till within an inch or so of its prey, which is 

 then seized by a sudden dart." 



Mr. Spalding subsequently tried similar experiments, with 

 similar results, on newly born mammals. He found, for 

 instance, that new-born pigs seek to suck almost immediately 

 after birth. If removed twenty feet from the mother, they 

 wriggle straight back to her guided apparently by her grunt- 

 ing. He put a pig into a bag immediately it was born, and 

 kept it in the dark till seven hours old, and then placed it 

 outside the sty ten feet from its mother. It went straight to 

 her, although it had to struggle for five minutes to squeeze 

 under a bar. A pig blindfolded at birth went about freely, 

 though tumbling against things. It had the blinder taken 

 off next day, and then " went round and round as if it had 

 had sight, and had suddenly lost it. In ten minutes it was 

 scarcely distinguishable from one that had had sight all 

 along. When placed on a chair, it knew the height to require 

 considering, went down on its knees, and leaped down. . . 

 One day last month, after fondling my dog, I put my hand 

 into a basket containing four blind kittens three days old. 

 The smell my hand had carried with it sent them puffing and 

 spitting in a most comical fashion."* 



Here I may quote an observation of my own from the 

 succeeding issue of " Nature." 



" Aj>ropos to what Mr. Spalding says about the early age 

 at which the instinctive antipathy of the cat to the dog 

 becomes apparent, I may state that some months ago I tried 

 an experiment with rabbits and ferrets somewhat similar to 

 that which he describes with cats and dogs. Into an out- 



# Nature, vol. xi, p. 507. 



