Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/546

528 encouragements, reproaches, and appeals, calculated to stimulate the natural tendency to imitation. With some species of birds this language too is taught; the individuals collect every morning and evening in chattering groups, and the young, enjoying the benefit of a social conversation, easily learn to sing and chatter. Singing birds sometimes, too, give one another lessons without thinking of it. Some birds sing badly when they have grown up alone, without the fellowship of companions of their species; others readily learn the songs of strange species, and even of man. Dureau de la Malle taught a starling to whistle the Marseillaise, and the bird in turn taught its fellow starlings of the neighborhood. These abnormal acquisitions, however, have not the fixity of hereditary instincts, and are easily forgotten unless constant care is exercised to preserve them—being, in this respect, very much like what is learned in the schools for the examinations.

Numerous facts similar to those we have cited have been collected by naturalists, travelers, and observers concerning education among mammals. The mother bear, for example, takes great pains in the training of her cubs; she teaches them to walk, climb, and eat, and inflicts punishments in the shape of cuffs and bites to insure success; and the cubs never resist, even if they are larger and stronger than their mother. A female elephant has been seen giving swimming lessons to her calf, and correcting it when it blundered. Working animals instruct their young by associating them in their labors. A female beaver has been observed to cut down a willow, gnaw the bark, and trim off the branches, while her young imitated her, and finally helped her carry a limb to the water.

When lions were still numerous and easily observed in southern Africa, they were sometimes seen instructing one another in voluntary gymnastics, and practicing their leaps, making a bush play the part of the absent game. Moffat tells the story of a lion, which had missed a zebra by miscalculating the distance, repeating the jump several times for his own instruction; two of his comrades coming upon him while he was engaged in the exercise, he led them around the rock to show them how matters stood, and then, returning to the starting point, completed the lesson by making a final leap. The animals kept roaring during the whole of the curious scene, "talking together," as the native who watched them said. By the aid of individual training of this kind, industrial animals become apter as they grow older; old birds, for instance, constructing more artistic nests than young ones, and little mammals like mice becoming more adroit with age. Yet, however ancient in the life of the species these acquisitions may be, they have not the solidity of primordial instincts, and are lost rapidly if not used.