duction-there is much detail concerning which we are ignorant. But for our present purpose the important point to notice is that the procedure of the female cannot be due to imitation; nor can it be the outcome of individually acquired experience; for the method of procedure is not gradually learnt, but is carried out without apparent hesitation the first and only time the appropriate occasion presents itself. Not only does the moth take no heed of her grubs, but they are so placed that she could not in any case ascertain by observation that only if the ovules are fertilized do her offspring thrive. She cannot possibly know what effect the stuffing of the pollen on to the stigma exercises, or indeed whether it have any effect at all. And yet generation after generation these moths collect the pollen from the anthers and bear it to the stigma. Spence's words "without knowledge of the end in view" are amply justified in this case, as in other cases of typically instinctive behaviour.

III. THE INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOUR OF YOUNG BIRDS

Since it is easy to hatch birds of many species in an incubator, and to rear them under conditions which not only afford facilities for observation but exclude parental influence, their study has special advantages. One can with some approach to accuracy distinguish the instinctive from the acquired factors in their behaviour.

The callow young of such birds as pigeons, jays, and thrushes are hatched in a helpless condition, and require constant and assiduous ministration to their elementary organic needs. Most of their instincts are of the deferred type. But pheasants, plovers, moor-hens, domestic chicks, and ducklings, with many others, are active soon after birth, and exhibit powers of complex co-ordination, with little or no practice of the necessary limb-movements. They walk

Some of the observations on which the summary of results given in this section are founded are presented in some detail in "Habit and Instinct," pp. 29–100.

and balance the body so soon aud so well as to show us that this mode of procedure is congenital, and has not to be gradually acquired through the guidance of experience. Young water-birds swim with neat and orderly strokes the very first time they are gently placed in water. Even little chicks a day or two old can swim well. Dr. Thorndike, who draws attention to this fact, appears to accept the view,

suggested by Dr. Bashford Dean, that the movements are not those of swimming but only of running. I have carefully watched the action through the glass walls of a tank and compared it with that of a young moor-hen. In the two cases it is quite similar in type, and the type appears to be different from that of running, though it is perhaps hard to distinguish

Psychological Review, May, 1899, p. 286.

the two. In any case, the hand over hand action is well co-ordinated, and is very different from a mere excited struggle. Chicks twenty-six hours old taken straight from the incubator drawer, before they had taken food, made directly for the side of the tank and tried to scramble out. They gradually sank deeper through the wetting of the down, but could keep afloat for from two to three minutes. I have made observations on chicks of various ages from twenty-four hours to a month, and find in all cases similar results; but with the older birds the flapping of the wings and more vigorous action cause them to get water-logged more rapidly. There is some apparent distress with cries; but less than one might expect under the circumstances. For the purposes of the above illustration Mr. Charles Whymper had before him a sketch I made of the leg-action, and instantaneous photographs of the chicks swimming for which I am indebted to my colleague Mr. George Brebner. I have not observed the behaviour of an adult hen when placed in the water. Dr. Thorndike says, "there is no vigorous instinct to strike out toward the shore," she "will float about aimlessly for awhile and only very slowly reach the shore." But Mrs. Foster Wood informs me that she has seen a hen leap into a pond after her brood of ducklings and swim to the other side, a distance of twenty feet.

Diving, in water-birds, is also an instinctive mode of behaviour; and this is obviously a more difficult procedure than swimming, one further removed from reflex action. And careful observations have placed beyond question the fact that flight is also instinctive. A swallow, for example, taken from the nest under conditions which made it practically certain that it had never yet taken wing, exhibited guided flight, and attempted to alight on a suitable ledge. Of course flight is generally a deferred instinct, and is not performed until the wings have reached a suitable state of development. An instinctive response, which may perhaps be regarded as one of its initial stages, is seen in quite young chicks. If placed in a basket, and rapidly lowered therein through a foot

or two, the chick will extend its skinny and scarcely feathered wings. But though, from the usual conditions of development, flight in birds is a deferred instinct, yet in exceptional cases it may be connate. The mound-builders (Megapodes) of the Australian region are hatched from large eggs in warm earth

FIG. 16.-Nestling Megapode, to show the well-developed wings. (From Dr. R. Bowdler Sharpe's " Wonders of the Bird World.")

or sand, and are not tended by the parents. So well fledged are these birds that they can fly the day they emerge from the egg. Dr. Worcester, while digging in one of their mounds, made an unsuccessful attempt to seize one which was newly hatched; but it flew several rods into thick brush, and this

notwithstanding the fact that it had probably never before seen the light of day.

It must not be supposed that, in adducing flight as an example of instinctive behaviour in birds, we are contending that it is this and nothing more throughout life. The inference to be drawn from the facts of observation, is rather that instinct provides a general ground plan of behaviour which intelligent acquisition, by enforcing here and checking there, perfects and guides to finer issues. Few would contend that the consummate skill evinced in fully developed flight at its best, the hurtling swoop of the falcon, the hovering of the kestrel, the wheeling of swifts in the summer air, the rapid dart and sudden poise of the humming bird, the easy sweep of the sea-gull, the downward glide of the stork-that these are, in all their exquisite perfection, instinctive. A rough but sufficient outline of action is hereditary; but the manifold graces and delicacies of perfected flight are due to intelligent skill begotten of practice and experience.

There are many little idiosyncracies and special traits. of flight which are probably instinctive-such as enable an ornithologist or a sportsman to recognize a flying bird from a distance. And the same is true of other modes of behaviour. The observer of young birds cannot fail to note and to be impressed by many of these. The way in which a little moorhen uses its wings in scrambling up any rough surface is very characteristic; so, too, is the manner in which a guinea-chick runs backwards and then sideways at a right angle when one attempts to catch him. If suddenly startled, moor-hens and chicks scatter and hide; plovers drop and crouch with their chins on the ground; pheasants stand motionless and silent. Knowledge of the ways of birds enables one to predict with tolerable accuracy how each kind will behave under given circumstances. That the actions are always precisely alike cannot be said with truth; but that the behaviour is so relatively definite as to be readily recognizable can be confidently asserted. That a moor-hen will flick its tail, that a chick will dust itself in the sand, that pheasants and