The Emotions in their Relation to Instinct. 203 



in its captor's pocket, and not liking the confinement 

 begins to struggle. When taken out it is just as lifeless 

 as before; but being put down on the ground and left 

 undisturbed — the gentleman having stepped to one side, 

 but continuing to watch — it lifts its head in a minute or 

 so, and seeing all apparently serene, it starts up on a 

 sudden and ' cuts its lucky ' with singular speed. 



" In the case of the water-rail which came under my 

 own observation, it was picked up on a snowy day by the 

 most intimate of the friends of my youth and early manhood. 

 He assumed that it was dazed with cold, and perhaps what 

 we Yorkshire folks call ' hungered ' as well. So he brought 

 it home with him, and laid it on a footstool in front of the 

 dining-room fire. Five minutes passed — ten were gone — 

 and still the lifeless bird lay as it was put down, dead to all 

 seeming ; only not stiff, as it ought to have been if dead of 

 cold as well as hunger. A few minutes later, my friend, 

 who was very still, but yet with an eye to the bird, saw it — 

 not lift its head, like the land-rail, and take a view, but — 

 start off in a moment with no previous intimation of its 

 purpose, and begin to career about the room with incredible 

 rapidity. It never attempted to fly. Any other captive 

 bird in its position would have made for the window at 

 once, and beaten itself half to pieces against the glass. 

 Not so the rail. With it, in its helter-skelter and most 

 erratic course, it was anywhere rather than the window or 

 the fire. Bound the room, across the room, under the 

 sofa, under the table, from corner to corner, and from side 

 to side, steering itself perfectly, notwithstanding legs of 

 chairs, legs of tables, the sofa-feet, footstools, or what not, 

 on and on it careered; and it was not without some 

 patience and many attempts that it was eventually 

 secured." 



Now here again, the activity-feelings associated with 



