44 



Habit and Instinct. 



is there such instinctive aversion. A far more extended 

 series of observations is needed to justify such a sweeping 

 assertion. The birds on which the observations were made 

 have, under natural conditions, parents who certainly afford 

 them some guidance in the matter of feeding. Such guidance 

 would in some degree prevent the incidence of natural 

 selection, and would diminish the elimination of those 

 which, without such guidance, might eat to their destruc- 

 tion. There are, however, birds, like the megapodes, which 

 are hatched out in mounds apart from parental influence, 

 and never know a mother's care. They may show instinctive 

 avoidances which our well-cared- for birds do not possess. 



That the parent bird does in most cases afford guidance 

 is unquestionable. And there seems to be an instinctive 

 tendency on the part of the young to wait upon her bill, or 

 rather upon any bill. I have observed a young pheasant and 

 a young guinea-fowl following ducklings, and apparently 

 waiting for the help that did not come ; for the bird that 

 waited for anything eatable from a duckling's voracious 

 beak would assuredly wait in vain. Still, the ducklings are 

 untidy feeders, and grains of meal would adhere near the 

 base of the beak ; and these the guinea-fowl would pick off 

 with care, till and this was soon the case he grew to be 

 independent. 



There does not seem to be any marked instinctive 

 response to the sight of water as such. Prof. Eimer* 

 placed on a board a large drop of water. At first his 

 chicks took no notice of it ; but when it was made to 

 tremble by shaking the board, one of the birds imme- 

 diately drank from it with perfect success in the well- 

 known fashion of adult fowls. Spalding says t that his 



* Op, Git., pp. 247, 2-18. 



t Macmillan's Magazine, February, 1873, p. 288. Cp. Darwin as quoted 

 in "Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 229. 



