i88o.] The Rate of Animal Development. 241 
“ Physicus . — -I think I have observed that birds learn to 
fly and acquire the use of their wings by continued efforts 
in the same manner as a child does that of his limbs. 
“ Ornither . — I cannot agree with you. Young birds can- 
not fly as soon as they are hatched, because they have no 
wing-feathers ; but as soon as these are developed, and even 
before they are perfectly strong, they use their wings, fly, 
and quit the nest without any education from their 
parents.”* 
Very similar assertions are found in a laborious attempt 
made by the late Prof. Whewellt to set aside the palpable 
faCt that man, like every other animal, has an instinctive 
or we might perhaps better say a hereditary — knowledge of 
the functions of his voluntary organs. 
Said the Professor : — “ The child learns to distinguish 
forms and positions by a repeated and incessant use of his 
hands and eyes : he learns to walk, to run, and to leap by 
slow and laborious degrees ; he distinguishes one man from 
another and one animal from another only after repeated 
mistakes. Nor can we conceive this to be otherwise. How 
should the child know at once what muscles he is to exert 
that he may stand and not fall, till he has often tried ? How 
should he learn to direCt his attention to the differences of 
different faces and persons till he is roused by some memory 
or hope which implies memory ? It seems to me as if the 
sensations could not, without considerable practice, be 
rightly referred to ideas of space, force, resemblance, and 
the like. Yet that which thus appears impossible is, in faCt, 
done by animals. The lamb, almost immediately after its 
birth, follows its mother, accommodating the aCtion of its 
muscles to the form of the ground. The chick just emerged 
from the shell picks up a minute inseCt, directing its beak 
with the greatest accuracy. Even the human infant seeks 
the breast and exerts its muscfes in sucking almost as soon 
as it is born.” 
So, after all, “that which thus appears impossible ” is, in 
fa< 5 t, done not by “animals ” only, but by man also ! 1 he 
concession contained in the last sentence is simply fatal to 
what has gone before. To be consistent the learned Pro- 
fessor ought by all means to have asserted that infants learn 
to suck only “ by slow and laborious degrees,” and after its 
sensations have been rightly referred to appropriate “ ideas.” 
It would scarcely be a more unwarrantable assumption than 
* Colle&ed Works. Vol. ix. Salmonia, p. 105. 
t Philosophy of the Indudtive Sciences, ii., p. 616. 
