THE WAYS OF LIFE 207 



istic call-note or swimming deftly a short time after birth 

 (in the case of coots). In the case of the young water- 

 hen he showed that the capacity of diving and swimming 

 under water was also thoroughly instinctive, but might 

 be deferred in its expression for a long time until the 

 appropriate liberating stimulus pulled the trigger. Very 

 instructive was his demonstration of the striking absence 

 of instincts that one might have expected to be present. 

 Thus, the young chicks to whom he was foster-parent showed 

 no recognition of water as drinkable material, though they 

 would take drops eagerly from a finger touching their bill. 

 They only became aware of water as water after they 

 happened to wet their bills by pecking their toes when 

 standing in a dish. Then they immediately drank in 

 the usual fashion. The chicks had never seen their mother, 

 of course ; but it was perhaps a little surprising that they 

 paid no special attention to her clucking outside the door. 

 For one might expect innate awareness of the significance 

 of a particularly important sound, since we know that the 

 capacity of producing a certain call-note is in some cases 

 innate or instinctive. Professor Lloyd Morgan also found 

 that his chicks were sometimes innocent enough to stuff 

 their crops with worms of red worsted, but they soon knew 

 better. For, the important outcome of the investiga- 

 tions was that the chicks make up for their paucity of 

 instincts by their quick inteUigence — by their extremely 

 rapid educability. 

 Lloyd Morgan worked out an admirable definition : — 



' Instincts are congenital, adaptive and co-ordinated 

 activities of relative complexity, and involving the 

 behaviour of the organism as a whole. They are similarly 

 performed by all like members of the same more or less 



