484 FOSTER PARENTAGE. 



foster-mother, as by the cuckoo or where orphaned, lost or 

 deserted young seek the good offices of some other mother 

 than their own. 



There are several other circumstances under which foster- 

 mothers act as such unwittingly, ignorantly, exhibiting therein 

 grave errors of the maternal instinct. Thus certain birds sit 

 on ' dummies,' on stones or other inanimate objects, on the 

 eggs or even the young of other species all substituted 

 experimentally by man for their own eggs or young, without 

 their ever detecting the deception. Not uniformly, however, 

 do they betray such ignorance and error. Romanes mentions 

 a Spanish hen that, disappointed in the gratification of her 

 maternal instincts by being placed upon c dummies,' after 

 losing patience at the absence of the expected result, 'turned 

 foster-mother to all the Spanish chickens in the yard,' of all 

 ages, but only to those, be it observed in this case, of her own 

 breed Brahma and Hamburg chickens not being adopted 

 with the others. 



In the case of a cat recently confined, two young squirrels 

 were artificially substituted for two kittens that were killed : 

 the cat did not notice her loss that is to say, at first. For 

 sooner or later in such cases the development of the natural 

 instincts of the foster-young climbing trees and eating nuts 

 in the case of young squirrels taking to the water in the 

 case of ducklings, gives rise to unbounded astonishment and 

 alarm in the foster-mother. When a hen sees the ducklings 

 hatched by herself taking to a horse pond, she gives no un- 

 certain signs of her surprise, concern, dread of, or at, their 

 by her supposed singular behaviour ; and she feels sadly 

 puzzled and annoyed at her inability to follow them upon 

 their natural element. Foster-mothers, therefore, may and 

 do undertake duties of the nature of which they are ignorant, 

 and for the results of which they are unprepared. 



The Ettrick Shepherd tells us that a mother sheep, de- 

 prived of her own young, will take to suck the lambs of 

 another mother if clad in the skin of one of her own dead 

 lambs. ' She accepts and nourishes it as her own ever after ' 

 not detecting the imposture. But what is more curious, 

 for some days at first, the deceived mother e shows far more 



