254 Habit and Instinct. 



which can even claim plausibility. To say that hens 

 have learnt to incubate because a careful study of their 

 neighbours' acts has led them to perceive that there 

 results a brood of chickens, is not only in itself ex- 

 travagant, but leaves the question of the primary origin 

 of the habit unanswered. We are bandied about from 

 neighbour to neighbour, and find at the end of the process 

 we are just where we began. Natural selection here steps 

 in, and tells us that we are on a false track. Intelligence 

 has taken no more part in the development of the habit of 

 incubation than it has in the habit of laying the eggs to 

 be incubated. 



Now obviously the case is not quite the same with the 

 instinct, if such it be, of enticing intruders from the nest. 

 Those who cheerfully read into the bird's mind the fully 

 developed consciousness of civilized man will perhaps say 

 that the lapwing reasons thus : " If I pretend to be wounded 

 and flutter round, I shall draw upon myself the intruder's 

 attention and lead him to suppose that I shall be easily 

 caught; and if I thus entice him away, my little ones 

 will be saved, and my end gained." Thus, it may be 

 said, might the bird argue. I have no hesitation in saying 

 that such a chain of reasoning on the part of lapwing 

 or duck is a sheer impossibility. Apart from the fact 

 that she has probably no experience of being wounded or 

 of the effects of wounds on others, the whole process is 

 essentially one of human ratiocination, and quite beyond 

 the capacity of the wisest of birds ; while there is further 

 supposed a histrionic power, and a realization of the 

 effect on others of her display, which many a human actor 

 might well covet. 



But is not intelligence, it will be said, perhaps displayed 

 in a simpler and more believable form ? May not the bird, 

 without any exercise of abstract reasoning, have found by 



