5° CONSCIOUSNESS 
sounds of many kinds. But this does not imply the inheri- 
tance of experience, which is essentially a discriminating pro- 
cess. There is no sufficient evidence that a peculiar cry 
suggests the hawk, of which the prozenitors have acquired 
bitter experience ; nothing to justify the belief that the sound 
carries with it inherited meaning. And as with hearing, so 
with sight. Young birds may be frightened by many strange 
objects. I have seen a group of several species, filled with 
apparent alarm at a large white jug suddenly placed among 
them, at balls of paper tossed towards them, at a handkerchief 
dropped in their midst. Itis, in fact, their inexperience which 
is often the condition of such fear. As Mr. Hudson says : * 
“A piece of newspaper carried accidentally by the wind is as 
great an object of terror to an inexperienced young bird as a 
buzzard sweeping down with death in its talons.” 
Until recently it was commonly asserted that birds avoid 
gaudy but nauseous or harmful insects through the inheri- 
tance of experience gained by their ancestors through many 
generations. But here again the inference seems to have been 
incautiously drawn. Of the hundreds of young birds I have 
had under observation, not one has avoided the peculiarly dis- 
tasteful cimnabar caterpillar, until it had gained for itself 
experience of its nauseous character. So too of wasps and 
bees. Only through experience are these avoided. It is true 
that chicks may shrink from them if they buzz or even walk 
rapidly towards them. But a large harmless fly will inspire 
just as much timidity. As the result of careful observations, 
Mr. Frank Finn f concludes ‘that each bird has to separately 
acquire its experience, and well remembers what it has learnt.” 
And with this conclusion my own observations are entirely in 
accord, 
Such is some of the observational evidence on which is 
based the provisional hypothesis that experience, as such, is 
not inherited. What, then, is inherited? Clearly the organic 
conditions under which experience can be acquired. Since a 
* “Naturalist in La Plata,” p 88. 
¢ Journal Asiatic Soci ty of Bengal, \xvii., part ii., 1897, p. 614. 
