August 21, 1696.] 



SCIENCE. 



215 



swallowed with evident signs of relish. 

 Up to this time, while in my possession, 

 the animal had taken food only when 

 placed by the fingers in the gaping mouth, 

 and had made no effort to pick, selectively, 

 the food from between the fingers ; nor had 

 it even changed its position on the approach 

 of food, but had remained in one place, 

 fluttering and incessantly calling until the 

 food was brought to it. On the morning of 

 the following day falling drops were again 

 struck at and seized, though the bird did 

 not relish the accompanying wetting. At 

 noon the drops were again seized and swal- 

 lowed. Signs of disapproval of the wetting 

 were shown on the morning of the 14th, 

 a,nd on the morning of the 15th the bird 

 avoided falling water and was content with 

 biting the edge of the dish. 



From the above observations I am in- 

 clined to agree with Prof. Mills that the 

 nature of eating and of drinking are not 

 radically different and, as the physical con- 

 dition of substances may pass imperceptibly 

 from solid to liquid, so the physiological 

 processes are practically the same whether 

 the food is solid, pultaceous or liquid ; 

 though I should not attempt to compare too 

 closely the relative perfection of the two 

 processes (p. 356). I do not, moreover, 

 feel that the first act of drinking is in its 

 totality necessarily instinctive (p. 355). 

 In other words, ' when a chick first drinks 

 on its beak being put into water ' the act 

 may be considered as, verj' largely, a result 

 of self-teaching. 



The phenomena of eating and of drink- 

 ing have not, in the discussion, been defi- 

 nitely defined, and there has been some lack 

 of discrimination in the use of the word 

 ' swallow.' The beak, moreover, is men- 

 tioned by Prof. Mills and Lloyd Morgan, 

 as the organ the stimulation of which pro- 

 duces the act of drinking, though Prof. 

 Baldwin attributes the action to the stimu- 

 lation of the sense of taste. 



It seems to the writer that the entire pro- 

 cess of eating and drinking should be divided 

 into three parts, viz., (1) seizure, (2) mouth- 

 ing or mulling and (3 ) deglutition . It is only 

 in the first of these that the term instinct 

 in the sense of inherited habit is necessa- 

 rily used. Baldwin, Mills and Lloyd Morgan 

 are practically agreed that the young chick 

 seizes instinctively on being stimulated by 

 some small, striking object at a suitable 

 distance. This object maybe nutritious or 

 it may be a feather, a pencil or a nail head, 

 a drop of water or a drop of ink. The 

 mechanism is ready and the stimulus prop- 

 erly applied produces the instinctive me- 

 chanical, or, as Lloyd Morgan would pre- 

 fer, organic action. 



The object now held between the mandi- 

 bles and mulled is subject to the examina- 

 tion, strikingly evident in the kingbird, of 

 the tongue, an organ at the same time tac- 

 tile, gustatory and locomotory. It stands 

 at the portal which leads from instinctive 

 to reflex action and is at once the inspector, 

 reporter and director of that which first 

 stimulated the eye and now, through a 

 motor response, has been placed where it 

 may stimulate other special sense organs : 

 taste, touch and probably smell. It is here 

 that instinctive action becomes guided by 

 individual control, and intelligence begins 

 to act through experience. 



The mouth-parts of the young kingbird 

 are large and the deliberate movements are 

 easily observed. I feel therefore that this 

 second and essential portion of the process 

 of eating and drinking in the small- 

 mouthed chick may have been neglected or 

 overlooked. Moreover, the process of the 

 perfecting of the action of eating and drink- 

 ing through repetition and the guidance of 

 the intelligence is, in the kingbird, compara- 

 tively slow and inclines one on the grounds 

 of comparative psychology, to the belief 

 that the complex act of the chick may be 

 only apparently perfect from the first, the 



