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ON INSTINCT IN BIRDS. 



relations, the indisposition of the organs, and the unmusical note of all 

 we ever beheld or heard of ; if generally taken, and comprehending all 

 swans, or of all places, we cannot assent thereto. Surely he that is bit 

 with a tarantula shall never be cured by this music ; and with the same 

 hopes we expect to hear the harmony of the spheres. 



ON INSTINCT IN BIRDS. 



BY C. W. Si 



It is my present intention to make known to you a few facts, which 

 have come under my own observation, illustrative of the partial loss, 

 or modification, of instinct in animals, which frequently takes place in 

 them when domesticated. I think that caged birds often lose the habit 

 of swallowing gravel for the purpose of grinding their food in the giz- 

 zard. I generally open my own birds which die, and have always found 

 a deficiency of gravel, from which circumstance I am induced to believe 

 that the diseases of caged birds are very often owing to their losing 

 the instinct of swallowing gravel.* I observed one of my redpolls the 

 other day in a fit, tumbling about in violent convulsions ; he remained 

 so for about two hours, during which time I, for an experiment, made 

 him swallow some drops of sherry, without its seeming to have any 

 very good effect ; I then, with a great deal of trouble, forced three little 

 pebble stones down his throat, and he has had no recurrence of the fit, 

 though he does not look quite well. I think that the above-mentioned 

 case shows evidently that the bird had partially lost its instinct. I once 

 put two hen canaries, with one cock, into a breeding cage; one of the 

 hens immediately paired, but the other was of too quarrelsome a dis- 

 position, and was continually fighting with its two fellow prisoners, 

 She, however, built a nest by herself ; and as her eggs were addled, I 

 put some chaffinches' and green linnets' eggs under her, which she 

 afterwards hatched. But I will proceed to relate the more remarkable 

 part of the affair. As the single hen hatched more young ones than 

 the other, I took some from under her, and put them under the other 

 hen ; this she immediately discovered, and used to go over and feed 

 her young one on the other's nest ; and, what was most extraordinary, 

 used to feed the other old hen as well, whenever she found her sitting 



* I have entered minutely into the subject of birds swallowing gravel in M Facul- 

 ties or Birds," Chapter v. — Ed. 



