406 PSYCHOLOGY. 



Bain has tried,* by describing the demeanor of new-born 

 lambs, to show that locomotion is learned by a very rapid 

 experience. But the observation recorded proves the 

 faculty to be almost perfect from the first ; and all others 

 who have observed new-born calves, lambs, and pigs agree 

 that in these animals the powers of standing and walking, 

 and of interpreting the topographical significance of sights 

 and sounds, are all but fully developed at birth. Often in 

 animals who seem to be ' learning ' to walk or fly the sem- 

 blance is illusive. The awkwardness shown is not due to 

 the fact that ' experience ' has not yet been there to asso- 

 ciate the successful movements and exclude the failures, but 

 to the fact that the animal is beginning his attempts before 

 the co-ordinating centres have quite ripened for their work. 

 Mr. Spalding's observations on this point are conclusive as 

 to birds. 



" Birds," he says, " do not learn to fly. Two years ago I shut up 

 five unfledged swallows in a small box, not much larger than the nest 

 from which they were taken. The little box, which had a wire front, 

 was hung on the wall near the nest, and the young swallows were fed by 

 their parents through the wires. In this confinement, where they could 

 not even extend their wings, they were kept until after they were fully 

 fledged. . . . Ou going to set the prisoners free, one was found 

 dead. . . .The remaining four were allowed to escape one at a time. 

 Two of these were perceptibly wavering and unsteady in their flight. 

 One of them, after a flight of some ninety yards, disappeared among 

 some trees." No. 3 and No. 4 " never flew against anything, nor was 

 there, in their avoiding objects, any appreciable diff'erence between 

 them and the old birds. No. 3 swept round the Wellingtonia, and No. 

 4 rose over the hedge, just as we see the old swallows doing every hour 

 of the day. I have this summer verified these observations. Of two 

 swallows I had similarly confined, one, on being set free, flew a yard or 

 two close to the ground, rose in the direction of a beech-tree, which it 

 gracefully avoided ; it was seen for a considerable time sweeping round 

 the beeches and performing magnificent evolutions in the air high above 

 them. The other, which was observed to beat the air with its wings 

 more than usual, was soon lost to sight behind some trees. Titmice, 

 tomtits, and wrens I have made the subjects of similar observations, and 

 with similar results. " * 



In the light of this report, one may well be tempted to 

 make a prediction about the human 'child, and say that if a 



* Senses and Intellect 3d ed. pp. 413-675. 

 t Nature, xii 507 (1875). 



