62 Habit and Instinct. 



It is quite possible that under natural conditions the 

 little chicks find the use of their legs more rapidly than 

 incubated birds. A writer in the Magazine of Natural History, 

 quoted by Yarrell, found a sandpiper's nest* in which 

 there were three young chicks, and an egg through which 

 the bill of a fourth was protruding. " Young as they were, 

 on my taking out the egg to examine it, the little things, 

 which," says the writer, "could not have been out of 

 their shells more than an hour or two, set off out of 

 the nest with as much celerity as if they had been running 

 about for a fortnight." Other observations of like import 

 might readily be quoted. But enough has been said 

 to show that the co-ordination for walking and running is 

 congenitally definite. 



Next as to swimming. Ducklings, a day or two old, 

 dropped into a tepid bath, kicked vigorously and excitedly 

 for a few seconds, but in a minute were swimming with 

 easy, rapid motion, and pecking at the marks on the side 

 of the bath. The movement of the legs showed great 

 nicety and accuracy of co-ordination. I compared a wild 

 duck and a tame duck, both about fifteen hours old, but 

 could detect no difference in swimming power. Both swam 

 at first with rather rapid strokes, but well. One, the wild 

 duck, while swimming kept putting its bill to the joint of 

 one leg, and seemed to find the presence of water awkward. 

 It did not, however, lift the leg, as an older bird would 

 have done. What struck me most in such young birds, 

 on the first occasion of their being in the water, was their 

 power of either staying in one spot, paddling rapidly, or 

 going ahead at a good speed, and turning readily in any 

 direction. 



Young moorhens, taken to the bath when the down was 

 scarcely dry after hatching, and before they could walk 

 * Vol. ii. p. 609, from Mag. Nat. Hiet, vol. vi. p. 148. 



