INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOUR OF YOUNG BIRDS 094 
guidance of subsequent behaviour. The two-days-old chick, 
with the aid of this instinctive co-ordination, performs well 
a number of actions, which, had she to consciously learn them 
all, would probably be still but half mastered when she was a 
skinny old hen. 
Our whole treatment of instinctive behaviour has been 
based on the assumption, already to some extent justified, that 
experience is not inherited. If it be hereditary, how comes it 
that chicks show no recognition of still water, which must have 
been familiar to the experience of generation after generation 
of birds? How comes it that they do not even seem to 
recognize their natural parent and protector, the hen? Two 
chicks ten days old were taken to the yard whence were derived 
the eggs from which they were hatched, and were placed about 
two yards from a hen which was clucking to her brood. They 
were not in a frightened condition, for they stood on my 
hand and ate grain from it, scratching at the palm. But of 
the clucking of the hen they took no notice whatever. The 
same results were obtained with other chicks thirteen days old. 
Was this due, as Spalding suggested, to loss of the instinctive 
response which was perhaps present at an earlier age? Seem- 
ingly not. For a chick was taken at the age of two and a half 
days to its own mother, which had three chicks. These followed 
her about, and ran at once to her when she clucked and pecked 
on the ground. The little stranger, however, took no notice, 
nor did he show any tendency either to go to the hen or to 
follow the three chicks, having been purposely brought up 
alone. When the hen took her little brood under her wing, 
the stranger was placed close to her. She clucked, and seemed 
anxious to entice and welcome the little fellow, seizing an oat- 
husk and dropping it before him ; but he remained indifferent, 
walking away and standing in the sunshine. After about forty 
minutes he seemed more inclined to go with the other chicks, 
but still ignored the existence of the hen. The natural 
instinctive tendency seems to be from the first to nestle under 
anything ; and there is the hen provided by nature for the 
purpose. By experience the chicks grow accustomed to her fussy 
H 
