202 



Habit and Instinct. 



noticed on Inch Michrie, in the Forth near Edinburgh, 

 young fledgeling terns crouch as you approach, and 

 even let you stoop and pick them up. But if once dis 

 turbed out of their crouching attitude, they scuttle o 

 through the long grass tussocks. So, too, with young pee- 

 wits. Mr. A. S. Eve, of Marlborough College, tells m 

 how, walking across the downs, a brown mass caught his 

 eye. At first it seemed a piece of dung, even as he stooped 

 over it; but slight motion, as of breathing, made hi 

 regard it as a toad, and he picked it up. Instantly tw 

 long legs kicked violently, while a stretched neck and ope 

 beak gave rise to loud squealing ! The concealment of 

 head and legs, and the colouring of the young bird 

 completely deceived him; and the sudden transition to 

 motion and noise nearly made him drop the bird from his 

 hand. The protective nature of the instinctive activity is 

 here well seen. But what we have to note is that there 

 must have been in the little pee-wit's consciousness a 

 rapid transition from the activity-feelings of crouching to 

 those of running away. And there seems to be a continuity 

 of emotional state that is not dependent on any similarity 

 of instinctive activity. 



A similar diversity of response, as exemplified in rails, 

 is thus graphically described by Canon Atkinson.* "A 

 gentlemen's dog catches a land-rail and brings it to his 

 master, unhurt of course, as is the well-trained dog's way, 

 but to all appearance perfectly dead. The dog lays the 

 bird down at his master's feet, and he turns it over with 

 his toe. It simply moves as it is moved, all its limbs limp. 

 Continuing to regard it, however, the man sees an eye 

 opened, and he takes it up. The ' artful dodger ' is quite 

 dead again in a moment, head hanging and dangling, 

 limbs loose, and no sign of life anywhere. It is put 



* " Forty Years in a Moorland Parish," p. 335. 



