xxii THE PROBLEM OF INSTINCT 499 



as well as those which are edible. They do not recognize 

 water till they have felt it, and they do not know that 

 water is drinkable till contact with the beaks sets up the 

 nervous and muscular reactions of drinking. By a series 

 of careful experiments Professor Lloyd Morgan shows that 

 young chicks have no fear of bees as bees, but merely 

 because they are large and unusual. They are equally 

 suspicious of a large fly or beetle, and, though eating 

 small worms greedily, are afraid of a large one. And 

 when the chicks were a few days old, and were no longer 

 afraid of large flies, they showed no fear even of wasps, 

 when presented to them for the first time. 



Very similar is the correction of Spalding's statements 

 that his young chicks gave the danger-signal when a hawk 

 was flying high overhead, and that a young turkey showed 

 equal alarm when a young hawk, kept in a cupboard, 

 uttered a shrill sound ; whence he concluded that the fear 

 of birds of prey, whether seen or heard, was instinctive. 

 For it is now shown that any strange object or any 

 unusual sound causes exactly similar alarm when first seen 

 or heard by any kind of young birds, and Mr. Hudson, of 

 La Plata fame, came to a similar conclusion. Other cases 

 which have been thought to prove instinctive dread of 

 enemies in various young animals are shown to be 

 explicable on similar principles; any sight, or sound or 

 smell, very different from what they have been accustomed 

 to, alarms them, and they learn what are really dangerous 

 either through the actions of their parents or by their own 

 personal experience. 



But, though young birds and mammals do not possess 

 instincts which enable them to discriminate between 

 objects that may be useful and those that may be hurtful 

 to them, they often possess the most wonderful acuteness 

 of the senses and powers of co-ordinated muscular action, 

 which enable them rapidly to acquire the knowledge that 

 is essential to them. The young chick only a few hours 

 out of the shell walks and runs, and is able to pick up 

 small objects in its beak, some being rejected and others 

 swallowed. The young duck swims when put into the 



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