442 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. HI. No. 64. 



If food be set down in considerable quantity 

 before newly batched chicks, and in a vessel 

 similar to that in which water is usually held, 

 they will be relatively slow to recognize and 

 eat such food. But in a wild state the con- 

 geners of the domestic fowl, as grouse, pheas- 

 ants, etc., do not find food or water before them 

 in such way. Their food is distributed, how- 

 ever, much more like the particles we scatter 

 before the chick than does their water supply 

 resemble that of our methods. 



A young grouse would naturally get its water 

 from the dew on herbage, possibly from rain 

 water that had gathered in little hollows of the 

 ground, surface, etc. And when the birds ap- 

 proach a stream the surface near is moist or 

 wet, the particles it would naturally peck at 

 would be found up to and beyond the very 

 margin of the water, so that the contact of the 

 beak with water in all these cases would be 

 inevitable and drinking would come about as 

 naturally as eating. 



When the ' writer of the note ' says, 'A chick 

 swallows water instinctively, but must be taught 

 to drink by example or accident,' the latter 

 term evidently having reference to the observa- 

 tion specially described in my letter, he plainly 

 either misses the real point of my observation or 

 neatly evades it. One might as well say a puppy 

 learns to smell by accident, for in the case in ques- 

 tion the chick did not swallow water merely, 

 but raised its head like an old fowl and drank 

 perfectly well on the very first occasion that 

 its beak had ever been immersed in water 

 (as a puppy sucks when its lips first come in 

 contact with a teat, etc.); and this I take it is 

 what happens in nature. The young grouse in 

 the forest, or even the chick on a grass plot or 

 in a garden, would come in contact with water 

 without any assistance ft-om the mother bird. 



The assumption that ' the chick might die of 

 thirst in the presence of water, as the sight of 

 water does not call up the movements of pecking 

 at it as do food and other small objects,' is purely 

 gratuitous. It is not primarily so much the 

 sight, but rather the touch of water, inevitable, 

 as I have tried to show, in a wild state that in 

 the very first instance leads to drinking, though 

 the bird would also peck at shining dew drops, 

 as my chick did at the drops on the rim of a 



vessel containing water. With a fair chance 

 and plenty of water about in a condition at all 

 resembling that in nature, there is no such 

 thing for a vigorous, hardy chick as death from 

 thirst. 



That habits may be hereditary in dogs I have 

 many times observed in my own kennel during 

 the last eight years, and, without expressing 

 any opinion as to the origin of instincts now, 

 I can see no impossibility in their dating back 

 to habits. 



A doctrine which asserts that eating is in- 

 stinctive, but that drinking is not, is to my 

 mind one to marvel at, and is a poor founda- 

 tion for theories of evolution or heredity. 



Comparative psychology will, I fear, con- 

 tinue to suffer till those who assume to deal 

 with it authoritatively spend more time among 

 animals, and less in their studies. A few ob- 

 servations or experiments do not give them in- 

 sight into the psychic nature of animals, and it 

 were well, I venture to think, if the qualifica- 

 tions of the comparative psychologist,. as set 

 forth by Dr. Groos, in the preface to his admir- 

 able work, "Die Spiele der Theire," were thor" 

 oughly known and believed in by all psycholo- 

 gists. Wesley Mills. 



McGiLL University, Montreal. 



PECULIAB ABRASION OF TREE TRUNKS. 



Passing recently through a tract of rather 

 open forest land, I could not help but notice a 

 very peculiar appearance or color showing to a 

 nearly uniform height on the westward side 

 only of many trees of different species. 



This shade of dull yellow extended from the 

 surface of the snow to a height of about three 

 to four feet, and at a little distance had much 

 the appearance of a fungoid growth which often 

 may be seen in nearly this color on dead or de- 

 caying trees. 



At first I was completely deceived, thinking 

 it to be a growth of this nature, and wondering 

 why it should have attacked so many trees at 

 the same time, I proceeded to investigate. A 

 close examination at once revealed the truth of 

 the matter. It was a plain case of wind-carried 

 snow and sleet versus tree trunks, and the outer 

 moss-grown bark had succumbed as its cut and 

 abraded surface made plain. In places this 



