BIRDS — GENERAL INTELLIGENCE. 31S- 



blown against them, as these accidents often occurred when there 

 was but little wind. I found that the peasantry had cotdc to 

 the conclusion that these unusual deaths were due to the flash 

 of the telegraph messages killing any starlings that happened to 

 be perched on the wires when working. Strange to say that 

 throughout the following and succeeding winters hardly a death 

 occurred among the starlings on their arrival. It would thus 

 appear that the birds were deeply impressed, and understood the 

 cause of the fatal accidents among their fellow-travellers the 

 previous year, and hence carefully avoided the telegraph wires ; 

 not only so, but the young birds must also have acquired this 

 knowledge and perpetuated it, a knowledge which they could 

 not have acquired by experience or even instinct, unless the 

 instinct was really inherited memory derived from the parents 

 whose brains were first impressed by it.^ 



Similar facts are given in Buckland's ' Curiosities of 

 Natural History,' ^ and I have myself known of a case in 

 Scotland where a telegraph was erected across a piece of 

 moorland. During the first season some of the grouse 

 were injured by flying against the wires, but never in any 

 succeeding season. Why the young birds should avoid 

 them without having had individual experience may, I 

 think, be explained by the consideration that in birds 

 which fly in flocks or coveys, it is the older ones that lead 

 the way. This explanation would not, of course, apply to 

 birds which fly singly ; but I am not aware that any ob- 

 servations have gone to show that the young of such 

 birds avoid the wires. 



I quote the following exhibition of intelligence in an 

 eagle from Menault : — 



The following account of the patience with which a golden 

 eagle submitted to surgical treatment, and the care which it 

 showed in the gradual use of the healing limb, must suggest 

 the idea that something very near to prudence and reason 

 existed in the bird. This eagle was caught in a fox-trap set in 

 the forest of Fontainebleau, and its claw had been terribly torn. 

 An operation was performed on the limb by the conservators of 

 the Zoological Gardens at Paris, which the noble bird bore with 

 a rational patience. Though his head was left loose, he made 

 no attempts to interfere with the agonising extraction of the 



* Nature, xx.,p. 266. ^ Vol. i., p, 216. See also Descent of Man, p. 80. 



