42 THE CONDOR Vol. XXIII 
gested seeds pumped from the parent’s crop into their yawning mouths. The 
probability seemed strong enough, at any rate, to warrant the trial of dairy 
milk as the fluid medium and, behold, a time-honored baby food was the re- 
sult, bread and milk. Quite a long and laborious process of reasoning to ar- 
rive at so simple a prescription as bread and milk, you may think. Yes, but 
you know one of the great values of scientific education is that it offers a good 
excuse for continuing to do some of the things we have done for generations 
anyway—if they happen to please us. 
The interesting part of the whole matter was the final and wholly satisfac- 
tory influence upon the twins. Let me remind you in the words of that homely 
philesopher of the day’s fiction, Mr. Dooley, ‘‘ Af ut worrks uts roight.’’ What 
better test could be asked for an experiment than that it succeed? Here was # 
scientific theory and a homely, common sense practice operative to a perfectly 
satisfactory result. The biologist and educator, who believed in the synonymy 
of his two titles, was delighted. More to the point, the twins were, too. 
From that time on until their comparative independence in food gather- 
ing, Nip and Tuck throve upon bread and milk, corn flakes and milk, shredded 
wheat and milk, or some equally grano-lactose combination. ‘‘So are we kin 
to all that is.’’ 
To the parent of mere human offspring who has labored days (and nights), 
months and years to navigate the customary shoal waters of croup, measles, 
whooping cough, ete., the almost explosive suddenness with which the success- 
ive growth stages in birds appear is little short of startling. After the first 
day of readjustment to a new regime the twins were carefully weighed each 
morning at the same hour on delicate chemist’s balances. Results for the first 
twenty-four hours had to be checked over repeatedly before the unassailable 
facets could be credited: The twins had gained 24.3 per cent in weight since the 
previous day at the same hour! Is it surprising, then, that feathers seemed 
almost to pop from their skins to cover an infant nakedness? What wonder 
that each morning seemed to show a change in appearance since the night be- 
fore? Much of that stuffing of bread crumb and milk had been transformed 
by the alchemy of biology, into baby bird instead of into the human deity 
which is so commonly the product of that homely ambrosia. What wonder 
that young birds are little else than digestive apparatus surrounded by a rela- 
tively thin wall of potentialities? They need all that laboratory of digestion. 
Digestion and assimilation are their chief business and they attend to that busi- 
ness pretty strictly. As is usually the case, attending to business produced 
gocd results and within fifteen days Nip and Tuck had changed from speckled, 
pale blue eggs to feathered birds able to fly up hill. 
Of course the biography of every infant must take cognizance of his dawn- 
ing mentality as evidenced through the oracle of the first spoken word. What 
vast interpretations are placed thereon! How profoundly interested everyone 
else is supposed to be! Long tedious months must elapse before even his 
mother can claim for the child that he has indulged in articulate speech. Dur- 
ng that time unlimited volumes of baby talk have been poured in upon the 
plastic matrix of his brain cells without tangible result. Ultimately, however, 
our words come back to us with growing distinctness, though regrettably they 
too often bear those mutilations of the mother tongue which have been poured — 
into his ears as ‘‘baby talk’’ and which later have to be unlearned. Of what- 
soever nationality, caste, or hereditary strain the infant may be, the speech of 
