282 Habit and Instinct. 



was endeavouring by all sorts of coaxing hen language, 

 and by pushing each chicken in turn with her bill, to 

 get them into the water also.' ' : The abnormal behaviour 

 of these hens may be contrasted with that of a hen 

 which after successive broods of chicks, hatches out a 

 brood of ducklings. When they, prompted by instinctive 

 impulse, take to the water, her fussy excitement knows 

 no bounds. Here is something contrary to all her 

 previous experience. What exactly passes through her 

 mind it is exceedingly difficult to surmise. The farmer's 

 wife naively says that the hen fears they will drown. 

 But what experience has the hen of drowning? To 

 adopt such an interpretation is to credit her with powers 

 of anticipating the results of experience, which it is hard 

 to conceive that she possesses. It is more probable that 

 her fussy behaviour is partly the result of her little ones 

 going where she has an instinctive aversion to following 

 them, and partly the result of a breach of normal associa- 

 tion due to previous experience with chicks. I am told 

 that a hen which has had broods of chicks is far more 

 fussy on such an occasion than a hen dealing with 

 her first brood, and therefore without individual ex- 

 perience. If this be so, it would seem to show that the 

 acquired association is as important as the instinctive 

 element. 



Now, in the hen that brings up successive broods of 

 ducklings, there is, in our terminology, a modification 

 of instinctive behaviour. Is there any tendency for such 

 a modification to become hereditary? Would the hens, 

 hatched from her eggs, incubated and brought up by a 

 foster parent, show a variation of instinct in a direction 

 similar to the modification she had acquired? We do 

 not know. Transmissionists would probably say that the 

 modification acquired in the one lifetime would not be 



