INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOUR OF YOUNG BIRDS 87 
or two, the chick will extend its skinny and scarcely feathered 
wings. But though, from the usual conditions of development, 
flight in birds is a deferred instinct, yet in exceptional cases 
it may be connate. The mound-builders (Megapodes) of the 
Australian region are hatched from large eggs in warm earth 
Var 
Yo Gn 
Gee 
Fic. 16.—Nestling Megapode, to show the well-developed wings. (From 
Dr. R. Bowdler Sharpe’s “ Wonders of the Bird World.”’) 
or sand, and are not tended by the parents. So well fledged 
are these birds that they can fly the day they emerge from the 
egg. Dr. Worcester, while digging in one of their mounds, 
made an unsuccessful attempt to seize one which was newly 
hatched ; but it flew several rods into thick brush, and this 
