XHI » INSTINCT AND REASON 3290 
plastic. A particular action may be partly instinctive 
and partly intelligent. Professor Lloyd Morgan has 
contributed a good deal to the understanding of the 
question.! He took some eggs from under a sitting 
hen and put them in an incubator, and when the 
chicks emerged from the eggs, he experimented on 
them. They pecked at almost everything, no doubt 
by instinct. But they had to learn to peck straight, 
and to learn to judge distance, so as to know whether 
a piece of food was within range of their beaks. 
Experience taught them that burning cigarette-ends 
were not good for food. When pieces of dark 
crimson worsted-wool were first substituted for the 
worms they had so much enjoyed, they were 
swallowed greedily, but afterwards they were viewed 
with much distrust and generally rejected. All his 
life long a bird is learning. An old Heron is far 
more knowing than a young one. The young Curlew 
has to learn much from his seniors and by experience 
before he attains to the proper Curlew standard of 
wariness. On the other hand, the Cuckoo is to a 
great extent able to dispense with experience and 
instruction. For it can hardly be supposed that an 
old bird takes a young bird in hand and teaches her 
what to do with her egg, or that the young bird goes 
through a process of learning to find a nest and 
entrust her egg to a foster-mother. Birds which are 
hatched from the egg by the sun, must be born with 
some ready-made knowledge of the world. Even 
teaching and experience can only awaken powers 
that are born in the bird. We often find him at the 
1 See his article in the Fortnightly Review for August, 1893. 
