Imitation. 167 



Mr. Peal's statement, before quoted, the Assamese find that 

 young jungle pheasants will perish if their pecking re- 

 sponses are not thus stimulated ; and Prof. Claypole tells 

 me that this is also the case with ostriches hatched in an 

 incubator. A little pheasant and guinea-fowl followed 

 two ducklings, one wild, the other tame, and seemed to 

 wait upon their bills, to peck where they pecked, and to be 

 guided by their actions. It is certainly much easier to 

 bring up young birds if older birds are setting an example 

 of eating and drinking; and instinctive actions, such as 

 scratching the ground, are performed earlier if imitation 

 be not excluded. I have observed that if a group of chicks 

 have learnt to avoid cinnabar caterpillars, and if then one 

 or two from another group are introduced and begin to 

 pick up the caterpillars, the others will sometimes again 

 seize them, though they would otherwise have taken no 

 notice of them. One of the chicks, coming upon a dead 

 bee, gave the danger or alarm note ; another at some little 

 distance at once made the same sound. A number of 

 similar cases might be given. But what impresses the 

 observer, as he watches the early development of a brood 

 of young birds, is the presence of an imitative tendency 

 which is exemplified in many little ways not easy to describe 

 in detail. 



What generalization, then, can be drawn from this 

 somewhat indefinite group of facts ? What is their rela- 

 tion to instinctive procedure in general ? Instinctive pro- 

 cedure, we must remember, is congenital behaviour of a 

 more or less definite kind, involving the inherited co- 

 ordination of motor activities due to outgoing nerve-currents, 

 and initiated by an external stimulus under organic con- 

 ditions of internal origin. Now, it would seem that where 

 the external stimulus is afforded by the behaviour of 

 another organism, and the responsive behaviour it initiates 



