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CHAPTER HI. 



LOCOMOTION IN YOUNG BIRDS. 



When young birds are hatched in an incnbator drawer 

 they seem at first to be exhausted by the effort, and require 

 some time to recover from the " catastrophe of birth." I 

 have generally left them for twelve hours or so, by which 

 time, if strong and healthy, they generally begin to move 

 about and get into the corners of the drawer. If then 

 removed and placed on the floor or ground, chicks, par- 

 tridges, pheasants, guinea-fowl, and plovers are able to 

 walk with such accuracy of inherited co-ordination that 

 there can be no question as to the truly instinctive and 

 congenital nature of the definiteness shown by these 

 activities. Ducklings and moorhens are more unsteady 

 on their legs at first, the leg-movements of the former 

 being sprawly, and the body not well raised from the 

 ground. A chick, pheasant, or partridge, can stand on 

 one leg and scratch the side of his head with the other foot 

 on his first day of life with only a little wobbling, but 

 a duckling topples over or tilts backward on to his tail ; 

 the double co-ordination of standing on one foot and 

 scratching his head with the other is too much for him. 

 The clever way in which a little pheasant chick, only 

 a few days old, will squeeze through a wire netting is 

 not only exceedingly pretty, but is remarkable as showing 

 nice control over the locomotor apparatus. Little moor- 

 hens seem to have a tendency to clamber up on to 



