SCIENCE. 
269 
the rest, and may be taken as representative of the whole. 
If, then, there be any agency in Nature, or outside of it, which 
can contrive and build up structures endowed with the 
gifts of Life — structures which shall not onlv digest, 
but which shall also feel and see, which shall be sen- 
sible of enjoyment conducive to their welfare, and 
of alarm on account of things which are dangerous to 
the same — then such structures have the same relation to 
that agency which machines have to man, and in this aspect 
it may be a legitimate figure of speech to call them living 
machines. What these machines do is different in kind 
from the things which human machines do ; but both are 
alike in this — that whatever they do is done in virtue of 
their construction, and of the powers which have been given 
to them by the mind which made them. 
Applying now this idea of a machine to the phenomena 
exhibited by the young Dipper, its complete applicability 
cannot be denied. In the first place, the young Dipper had 
a physical structure adapted to diving. Its feathers were of 
a texture to throw off water, and the shower of pearly drops 
which ran off it, when it emerged from its first plunge, 
showed in a moment how different it was from other fledge- 
lings in its imperviousness to wet. Water appeared to be 
its “ native element,” precisely in the same sense in which 
it is said to be the native element of a ship which has been 
built high in air, and of the not very watery materials of 
wood and iron. Water, which it had never seen before, 
seemed to be the native element of the little bird in this 
sense, that it was so constructed as to be and to feel at home 
in it at once. Its “lines ” had been laid down for progres- 
sion both in the air and water. It was launched with a motive- 
power complete within itself, and with promptings sufficient 
for the driving of its own machinery. For the physical 
adaptation was obviously united with mental powers and 
qualities which partook of the same pre-adjusted harmony. 
These were as congenital as the texture of its feathers or the 
structure of its wing. Its terror arose on seeing the proper 
objects of fear, although they' had never been seen before, 
and no experience of injury had arisen. This terror 
prompted it to the proper methods of escape, and the knowl- 
edge how to use its faculties for this object was as intuitive 
as the apparatus for effecting it was hereditary. In this sense 
the Dipper was a living, breathing, seeing, fearing and div- 
ing machine — ready made for all these purposes from the nest 
— as some other birds are even from their first exclusion 
from the egg. 
The case of the young Merganser is still more curious and 
instructive with reference to the same questions. The young 
of all the A natidce are born, like the gallinaceous birds, not 
naked or blind, as most others are, but completely equipped 
with a feathery down, and able to swim or dive as soon as 
they see the light. Moreover, the young of the Merganser 
have the benefit of seeing from the first the parent bird per- 
forming these operations, so that imitation may have 
some part in developing the perfection with which they are 
executed by the young. But the particular manoeuvre re- 
sorted to by the young bird which baffled our pursuit was 
a manoeuvre in which it could have had no instruction from 
example — the manuoevre, namely, which consists in hiding 
not under any cover, but by remaining perfectly motionless 
on the ground. This is a method of escape which cannot 
be resorted to successfully except by birds whose coloring 
is adapted to the purpose by a close assimilation with the 
coloring of surrounding objects. The old bird would not 
have been concealed on the same ground, and would never 
itself resort to the same method of escape. The young 
therefore, cannot have been instructed in it by the method 
of example. But the small size of the chick, together 
with its obscure and curiously mottled coloring, are spe- 
cially adapted to this mode of concealment. The young of 
all birds which breed upon the ground are provided with a 
garment in such perfect harmony with surrounding effects 
of light as to render this manoeuvre easy. It depends, how- 
ever, wholly for its success upon absolute stillness. The 
slightest motion at once attracts the eye of any enemy 
which is searching for the young. And this absolute still- 
ness must be preserved amidst all the emotions of fear and j 
terror which the close approach of the object of alarm must, 
and obviously does, inspire. Whence comes this splendid, j 
even if it be unconscious, faith in the sufficiency of a de- 
fense which it must require such nerve and strength of will 
to practice? No movement, not even the slightest, though 
the enemy should seem about to trample on it ; such is the 
terrible requirement'of Nature — and by the child of Nature 
implicitly obeyed ! Here, again, beyond all question, we 
have an instinct as much born with the creature as the har- 
monius tinting of its plumage — the external furnishing be- 
ing inseparably united with the internal furnishing of mind 
which enables the little creature in very truth to “ walk by 
faith and not by sight.” Is this automatonism ? Is this 
machinery? Yes. undoubtedly in the sense explained be- 
fore — that the instinct has been given to the bird in pre- 
cisely the same sense in which its structure has been given 
to it — so that anterior to all experience, and without the 
aid of instruction or of example, it is inspired to act in this 
manner on the appropriate occasion arising. 
Then, in the case of the Wild Duck, we rise to a yet 
higher form of instinct, and to more complicated adapta- 
tions of congenital powers to the contingencies of the ex- 
ternal world. It is not really conceivable that Wild Ducks 
have commonly many opportunities of studying each other’s 
action when rendered helpless by wounds. N or is it conceiv- 
able that such study can have been deliberately made even 
when opportunities do occur. When one out of a flock is 
wounded all the others make haste to escape, and it is cer- 
tain that this trick of imitated helplessness is practiced by 
individual birds which can never have had any such oppor- 
tunities at all. Moreover, there is one very remarkable cir- 
cumstance connected with this instinct, which marks how 
much of knowledge and of reasoning is implicitly contained 
within it. As against Man the manoeuvre is not only use- 
less, but it is injurious. When a man sees a bird resorting 
to this imitation, he may be deceived for a moment, as I 
have myself been ; but his knowledge and experience and 
his reasoning faculty" soon tell him from a combination of 
circumstances that it is merely the usual deception. To 
Man, therefore, it has the opposite effect of revealing the 
proximity of the young brood, which would not otherwise 
be known. I have repeatedly been led by it to the discovery 
of the chicks. Now, the most curious fact of all is that this 
distinction between Man and other predacious animals is re- 
cognized and reflected in the instinct of birds. The manoeuvre 
of conterfeiting helplessness is very rarely resorted to except 
when a dog is present. Dogs are almost uniformly" deceived 
by it. They never can resist the temptation presented by a 
bird which flutters apparently helpless just in front of their 
nose. It is, therefore, almost always successful in drawing 
them off, and so rescuing the young from danger. But it is 
the sense of smell, not the sense of sight, which makes dogs 
so specially dangerous. The instinct which has been given 
to birds seems to cover and include the knowledge that as the 
sense of smell does not exist to the like effect in Man, the 
mere concealment of the young from sight is ordi- 
narily, as regards him, sufficient for their protection : and 
yet I have on one occasion seen the trick resorted to when 
Man only" was the source of danger, and this by a species of 
bird which does not habitually practice it, and which can 
have had neither individual nor ancestral experience. This 
was the case of a Blackcap ( Sylvia At>icapilla), which fell to 
the ground, as if wounded, from a bush, in order to dis- 
tract attention from its nest. 
It now we examine, in the light of our own reason, all 
the elements of knowledge or of intellectual perception 
upon which the instinct of the Wild Duck is founded, and 
all of which, as existing somewhere, it undoubtedly reflects, 
we shall soon see how various and extensive these ele- 
ments of knowledge are. First, there is the knowledge 
that the cause of the alarm is a carnivorous animal. On 
this fundamental point no creature is ever deceived. The 
youngest chick knows a hawk, and the dreadful form fills it 
with instant terror. Next, there is the knowledge that 
dogs and other carnivorous quadrupeds have the sense of 
smell, as an additional element of danger to the creatures 
on which they prey. Next, there is the knowledge that 
the dog, not being itself a flying animal, has sense enough 
not to attempt the pursuit of prey which can avail itself of 
this sure and easy method of eicape. Next, there is the 
conclusion from all this knowledge, that if the dog is to be 
induced to chase, it must be led to suppose that the power 
of flight has been somehow lost. And then there is the 
