58 Habit and Instinct. 



but not quite, striking the toad with his bill, and rebound- 

 ing, as it were, to the perch. Then he desisted, and eyed 

 the toad. After seven or eight minutes, he turned on his 

 perch, and very soon the toad dropped on its belly and 

 rapidly crawled away, hiding in a crack between the board 

 and the side of the cage, from which position he was 

 removed and set free. The procedure of the two creatures 

 — bird and amphibian — was a very pretty example of 

 animal habit, with apparently a good deal of instinctive 

 basis. 



The fly-catchers I had under observation took the raw 

 beef on which I fed them from the points of a pair of 

 forceps with a rapid snap of the bill. Is this because they 

 are naturally fed on live insects ? Shortly after the tragic 

 end of one of them, the other died ; but for two days he 

 had taken food from the forceps, fluttering on the wing. 



