380 REPORT— 1901. 



interest in connection with the regeneration of injured beaks in birds. 

 I cannot suppose that this second-day combat was other than an early 

 expression of the combative instinct ; it could hardly be due to hunger, 

 for I have noted in regard to Aleph and Beth, between their first and second 

 days, that they were fed at 3.30 a.m., at 6 a.m., at 9.30 a.m., and so on till 

 6 p.m. They would only take a little at a time, but that greedily enough. 

 I suppose the mother must give them mouthfuls with great rapidity, for I 

 entirely failed to see a single case of feeding at the gullery, and others 

 have been equally unsuccessful. Between 7 and 8.30 p.m. on May 24, 

 between 3.30 and 7.30 a.m. on the 25th, along with a careful observer to 

 whom I am much indebted, I watched the nests in the hope of detecting 

 the feeding process, but quite in vain. 



Third Day. — On the third day one of them had a bath, and showed 

 the completeness of the cleaning instinct. The head was ducked sideways, 

 shaken about, and reducked precisely in adult fashion, and this on first 

 experience of water, afid of course without any example. After some clean- 

 ing the bird drank in the usual chick fashion. 



Another, Omega, on its third day was put into a deep bath : it 

 screamed for a few seconds, then settled down to paddling in a thoroughly 

 efiicient fashion, but with a tendency to swim backwards. It washed its 

 head thoroughly, cleaned its bill with its foot, turning round and round in 

 the water like a top, and after the bath it preened itself. Repeated ex- 

 periments with different birds showed perfectness of swimming powers 

 without experience or imitative stimulus ; also perfect preening after the 

 bath. 



In several cases the bath was followed by extreme weakness, by con- 

 vulsive fits, by inability to stand upright — also observed in fatigue (the 

 whole tarso-metatarsus being horizontal) — and by a physiologically inter- 

 esting tendency to run I'apidly backwards and then collapse. After 

 ■N'arious treatments — warm milk, a little oil, massage, and drying before 

 the fire — there was rapid restoration to normal vigour. I should, of 

 course, like to know what the backward movements really mean. They 

 are not to be confused with the normal backward run of 6-9 inches before 

 defecation, which is doubtless in part an instinctive adaptation to avoid 

 filing the nest, though perhaps also with some internal functional import. 



Omega in its third day was fighting with X of two days, cowered 

 down into a corner when I hissed vigorously : it was far more frightened 

 than any other I observed. Again, one would like to know what the hiss 

 corresponds to in the normal environment. The same bird Omega fought 

 on the same day with Y (a day younger) with the bills gripped in the adult 

 fashion. 



My observations made at odd times in a busy summer session cannot 

 be taken so seriously as the careful studies by Lloyd Morgan and others, 

 but they left me with the general impression that the wild bird is in some 

 respects more endowed at birth than the cleverest chick. 



For instance, while we know that Lloyd Morgan's chicks would gorge 

 themselves with useless or hurtful things, such as worms made of red 

 worsted, the young gulls were from the first judicious in their eating. 

 During the first two days they got some of the cotton-wool of their 

 bed into their mouths, but this was inevitable ; they often pecked at little 

 pieces of dry excrement, just as they pecked at any conspicuous spot, such 

 as a letter on a piece of paper, and so persistently at spots on the saucer 

 that it seemed advisable to give some of the youngest an unspotted saucer. 



