242 CHILDHOOD OF ANIMALS 



and to protect the fledglings from hurting themselves in their first 

 efforts. Sparrows may be seen tempting their young into the air 

 by offering them food and then flying off a little distance before 

 it has been taken. The mother stork pushes the young birds off 

 the edge of the nest or chimney-stack on which they have been 

 resting. Most of the birds-of-prey and many of the perching and 

 singing birds push their young off a support and then hurriedly 

 fly under them to break their fall. Even after the first fluttering 

 movements have been made, young birds take weeks or months 

 before they acquire perfect control, before they can turn in the air 

 alight suddenly on a branch or even on the ground, and certainly 

 before they can readily launch themselves into the air from the 

 ground. I have not been able to obtain any information as to 

 how young bats, flying squirrels and other volant mammals take 

 to the air. I should expect to find that they learn with difficulty 

 and that they are aided by their parents. 



The process of learning to eat shows an intimate blending of 

 instinct and experience in both birds and mammals. The instinctive 

 part resides chiefly in the senses of taste and smell, and the part 

 that comes by experience is the association of appearance with 

 edible qualities. But the matter is further complicated by the 

 fact that many young birds and mammals are fed by their parents 

 and would otherwise starve in the midst of plenty. In the case 

 of birds, those that are hatched in an active condition generally 

 pick up their own food almost at once. At first they peck at every- 

 thing, taking stones, grains, fragments of vegetation, insects or 

 pieces of flesh, but very soon select only vegetable matter if they 

 are eaters of plants, different kinds of material if they are omni- 

 vorous, or grubs, insects, fish or flesh if they are carnivorous. The 

 carnivorous young birds do not seem to have any strongly marked 

 choice between fish and flesh. A good many of the active young 

 birds are assisted by their parents, either by food being brought 

 to them, or disgorged in front of them, and these when they are 

 left to themselves will pick up food, but will die rather than hunt 

 for it. They learn only slowly that food may be edible even although 

 it is not brought by the parent. All the birds in the mouths of 

 which the parents place the food take a very long time to associate 

 the appearance of food with the idea of eating. If substances are 

 actually placed in their mouths, they instinctively swallow them, 

 but reject them if they are unsuitable, and soon learn to do so 

 without having swallowed them. On the other hand, hungry young 



