328 THE STRUCTURE AND LIFE OF BIRDS CHAP. 
reflex action. Next let us look for some examples 
of reasoning power or intelligence in birds. If they 
learn by experience that men in their neighbourhood 
do not shoot on Sunday, and if, in consequence, they 
afe much less cautious on that day than on week- 
days, they are showing intelligence. In the same 
way Pheasants learn by experience to distinguish a 
rifle from a shot-gun. The former has no terrors for 
them, and they will feed quietly while the bullets 
pass over them. I have seen the same complete 
indifference to the noise of rifle-shooting in the 
Great Spotted Woodpecker. To learn wisdom by 
individual experience is of the very essence of 
reason. Without intelligence or reasoning power of 
a kind, a Redpoll could hardly learn to pull up his 
bucket of water when he is thirsty. Probably he 
does not consciously connect the means and the end. 
He is like the man who puts a penny in the slot and 
takes his piece of chocolate without any knowledge 
of the machinery, the working of which has given 
him what he wanted. He connects the penny and 
the chocolate, but does not know by what process the 
one produces the other. 
There is no doubt that some actions are purely 
instinctive, but it is comparatively seldom that a 
“little dose” of reason is absent. Intelligence often 
modifies instinct. A caterpillar who weaves a small 
web of silk from which to suspend his chrysalis will, 
if he finds himself in a box with a muslin lid, 
economise in silk and hang his chrysalis from the 
muslin. A bird will modify the form of his nest 
to suit changed circumstances. Instinct is in fact 
