Fear tn Birds. 8? 



1 suppose the Talegallus — the best-known brush- 

 turkey — must be looked on as an exception to all 

 other birds with regard to the point I am con- 

 sidering ; for this abnormal form buries its eggs in 

 the huge mound made by the male, and troubles 

 herself no more about them. When the young is 

 fully developed it simply kicks the coffin to pieces 

 in which its mother interred it, and, burrowing its 

 way up to the sunshine, enters on the pleasures and 

 pains of an independent existence from earliest 

 infancy — that is, if a species born into the world in 

 full possession of all the wisdom of the ancients, can 

 be said ever to know infancy. At all events, from 

 Mr. Bartlett's observations on the young hatched 

 in the Zoological Gardens, it appears that they took 

 no notice of the old birds, but lived quite indepen- 

 dently from the moment they came out of the ground, 

 even flying up into a tree and roosting separately 

 at night. I am not sure, however, that these ob- 

 servations are quite conclusive; for it is certain 

 that captivity plays strange pranks with the instincts 

 of some species, and it is just possible that in a 

 state of nature the old birds exercise at first some 

 slight parental supervision, and, like all other 

 species, have a peculiar cry to warn the young of the 

 dangers to be avoided. If this is not so, then the 

 young Talegallus must fly or hide with instinctive 

 fear from every living thing that approaches it. I, 

 at any rate, find it hard to believe that it has a 

 knowledge, independent of experience, of the 

 different habits of man and kangaroo, and dis- 

 criminates at first sight between animals that are 

 dangerous to it and those that are not. This 



