396 PSYCHOLOGY. 



Adirondack wilderness tliat it is a very serious matter if a 

 cow wanders oflf and calves in the woods and is not found 

 for a week or more. The calf, l)v that time, is as wild and 

 almost as fleet as a deer, and hard to capture without vio- 

 lence. But calves rarely show any particular wildness to 

 the men who have been in contact with them during the 

 tirst days of their life, when the instinct to attach them- 

 selves is uppermost, nor do they dread strangers as they 

 would if brought up wild. 



Chickens give a curious illustration of the same law. 

 Mr. Spalding's wonderful article on instinct shall supply us 

 with the facts. These little creatures show opposite in- 

 stincts of attachment and fear, either of which may be 

 aroused by the same object, man. If a chick is born in the 

 absence of the hen, it 



'•will follow any moving object. And, when guided by sight alone, 

 thev seem to have no moi'e disposition to follow a hen than to follow a 

 duck or a human being. Unreflecting lookers-on, when they saw chick- 

 ens a day old running after me," says Mr. Spalding, "and older ones 

 following me for miles, and answering to my whistle, imagined that I 

 must have some occult power over the creatures : whereas I had simply 

 allowed them to follow me from the first. There is the instinct to follow; 

 and the ear, prior to experience, attaches them to the right object." * 



But if a man presents himself for the first time when 

 the instinct of fear is strong, the phenomena are altogether 

 reversed. Mr. Spalding kept three chickens hooded until 

 they were nearly four daj'S old, and thus describes their 

 behavior : 



"Each of them, on being unhooded, evinced the greatest terror to 

 me, dashing off in the opposite direction whenever I sought to approach 

 it. The table on which they were unhooded stood befoj-e a window, and 

 each in its turn beat against the window like a wild b'.rd. One of them 

 darted behind some books, and, squeezing itself into a corner, remained 

 cowering for a length of time. AVe might guess at the meaning of this 

 strange and exceptional wildness ; but the odd fact is enough for my 

 present purpose. Whatever might have been the meaning of this 

 marked change in their mental constitution had they been unhooded 

 on the previous day they would have run to me instead of from me — it 

 could not have been the effect of experience ; it must have resulted 

 wholly from changes in their own organizations." f 



* Spalding, Macmillan's Magazine, Feb. 1873, p. 287. 

 t Ibid. p. 289. 



