222 The Outline of Science 



to its own and is going to take up the reins at many corners of 

 the daily round. Professor Lloyd Morgan observed that his 

 chickens incubated in the laboratory had no instinctive awareness 

 of the significance of their mother's cluck when she was brought 

 outside the door. Although thirsty and willing to drink from a 

 moistened finger-tip, they did not instinctively recognize water, 

 even when they walked through a saucerful. Only when they 

 happened to peck their toes as they stood in the water did they 

 appreciate water as the stuff they wanted, and raise their bills up 

 to the sky. Once or twice they actually stuffed their crops with 

 "worms" of red worsted! 



Instinctive aptitudes, then, the young birds have, but these 

 are more limited than in ants, bees, and w r asps; and the reason is 

 to be found in the fact that the brain is now evolving on the tack 

 of what Sir Ray Lankester has called "educability." Young 

 birds learn with prodigious rapidity; the emancipation of the 

 mind from the tyranny of hereditary obligations has begun. 

 Young birds make mistakes, like the red worsted mistake, but 

 they do not make the same mistakes often. They are able to 

 profit by experience in a very rapid way. We do not mean that 

 creatures of the little-brain type, like ants, bees, and wasps, are 

 unable to profit by experience or are without intelligence. There 

 are no such hard-and-fast lines. We mean that in the ordinary 

 life of insects the enregistered instinctive capacities are on the 

 whole sufficient for the occasion, and that intelligent educability 

 is very slightly developed. Nor do we mean that birds are quite 

 emancipated from the tyranny of engrained instinctive obliga- 

 tions, and can always "ring up" intelligence in a way that is 

 impossible for the stereotyped bee. The sight of a pigeon brood- 

 ing on an empty nest, while her two eggs lie disregarded only a 

 couple of inches away, is enough to show that along certain lines 

 birds may find it impossible to get free from the trammels of 

 instinct. The peculiar interest of birds is that they have many 

 instincts and yet a notable power of learning intelligently. 



