56 Habit and Instinct. 



placed in a small " chip " box lined with cotton-wool, 

 and kept in the corner of the incubator drawer. So soon 

 as it had taken a morsel or two of food at intervals of 

 about thirty to forty minutes, it would energetically 

 thrust its hind quarters over the edge of the box and 

 void its excrement. Jays and other young nestlings 

 also show this instinctive procedure, which prevents their 

 "fouling their own nest." The excrement is enclosed 

 in a sort of skin, and can be lifted with a pair of forceps 

 without breaking this pellicle. The old birds in many 

 cases carry away the excrement in the bill, and drop 

 it at a distance from the nest. A friend of mine, who 

 loves birds, and has been accustomed to observe their 

 habits for years, noticed swallows flying in and out 

 of the porch of his house, and, to induce them to build, 

 he caused shelves to be put up there. On these shelves 

 swallows built their nest. He noted that the young birds, 

 when old enough to quit the nest and rest on the shelf, 

 after being fed by their parents, were nudged and pushed 

 until they turned round and voided excrement, which was 

 immediately seized by the parent bird with the tip of the. 

 beak, carried away, and dropped outside. 



Nestling jays, which were brought to me when they 

 were about ten days old, showed no sign of fear, and fed 

 greedily on what I provided, thriving well, and growing up 

 into fine birds. The following observation, made on the 

 ninth day after receiving the birds, is worth recording 

 as a good example of deferred instinctive i procedure. 

 I offered one of them a June-bug or summer chafer 

 {Bhizotrogus solstitialis). It was refused. The other bird 

 seized it at once in the bill, bent down its head, and tried 

 on the perch to put his foot on it. After trying this- 

 unsuccessfully two or three times, he hopped down on to 

 the floor of the cage, and dropped the beetle, seized it 



