Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/612

594 ground, to build "new ones on the tops of high trees, afterward bringing their young ones down on their backs to the water"; and exactly the same thing has been recorded by another observer of the wild ducks of Guiana. Now, if intelligent adjustment to peculiar circumstances is thus adequate, not only to make a whole breed or species of bird transport their young upon their backs—or, as in the case of the woodcock, between their legs—but even to make web-footed water-fowl build their nests in high trees, I think we can have no doubt that if the need of such adjustment were of sufficiently long continuance, the intelligence which leads to it would eventually produce a new and remarkable modification of their ancestral instinct of nest-building.

Turning now from the instinct of nidification to that of incubation, I may give one example to show the plasticity of the instinct in relation to the observed requirements of progeny. Several years ago I placed, in the nest of a sitting Brahma hen, four newly-born ferrets. She took to them almost immediately, and remained with them for rather more than a fortnight, when I made a separation. During the whole of the time the hen had to sit upon the nest, for the young ferrets were not able to follow her about, as young chickens would have done. The hen was very much puzzled by the lethargy of her offspring, and two or three times a day she used to fly off the nest calling on her brood to follow; but, on hearing their cries of distress from cold, she always returned immediately, and sat with patience for six or seven hours more. I found that it only took the hen one day to learn the meaning of these cries of distress; for, after the first day, she would always run in an agitated manner to any place where I concealed the ferrets, provided that this place was not too far away from the nest to prevent her from hearing their cries. Yet I do not think it would be possible to imagine a greater contrast between two cries than the shrill, piping note of a young chicken and the hoarse, growling noise of a young ferret. At times the hen used to fly off the nest with a loud scream, which was doubtless due to the unaccustomed sensation of being nipped by the young ferrets in their search for the traditional source of mammalian nutriment. It is further worthy of remark that the hen showed so much anxiety when the ferrets were taken from the nest to be fed, that I adopted the plan of giving them the milk in their nest, and with this arrangement the hen seemed quite satisfied; at any rate she used to chuck when she saw the milk coming, and surveyed the feeding with evident satisfaction.

Thus we see that even the oldest and most important of instincts in bees and birds admit of being greatly modified, both in the individual and in the race, by intelligent adaptation to changed conditions of life; and therefore we can scarcely doubt that the principle of lapsing intelligence must be of much assistance to that of natural selection in the origination and development of instinct.

I shall now turn to another branch of the subject. From the