Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 61.djvu/139

Rh of nervous dance, made on a smooth table. As an example of unacquired dexterity, I may mention that on placing four ducklings a day old in the open air for the first time, one of them almost immediately snapped at and caught a fly on the wing. More interesting, however, is the deliberate art of catching flies practised by the turkey. When not a day and a half old I observed the young turkey already spoken of slowly pointing its beak at flies and other small insects without actually pecking at them. In doing this, its head could be seen to shake like a hand that is attempted to be held steady by a visible effort. This I observed and recorded when I did not understand its meaning. For it was not until after, that I found it to be the invariable habit of the turkey, when it sees a fly settled on any object, to steal on the unwary insect with slow and measured step until sufficiently near, when it advances its head very slowly and steadily till within an inch or so of its prey, which is then seized by a sudden dart. If all this can be proved to be instinct, few, I think, will care to maintain that anything that can be learned from experience may not also appear as an intuition. The evidence I have in this case, though not so abundant as could be wished, may yet, perhaps, be held sufficient. I have mentioned that this masterpiece of turkey cleverness when first observed was in the incipient stage, and, like the nervous dance that precedes the actual scraping, ended in nothing. I noted it simply as an odd performance that I did not understand. The turkey, however, which was never out of my sight except when in its flannel bag, persisted in its whimsical pointing at flies, until before many days I was delighted to discover that there was more in it than my philosophy had dreamt of. I went at once to the flock of its own age. They were following a common hen, which had brought them out; and as there were no other turkeys about the place, they could not possibly learn by imitation. As the result, however, of their more abundant opportunities, I found them already in the full and perfect exercise of an art—a cunning and skilful adjusting of means to an end—bearing conspicuously the stamp of experience. But the circumstances under which these observations were made left me no room for the opinion that the experience, so visible in their admirable method of catching flies, was original, was the experience, the acquisition of those individual birds. To read what another has observed is not, however, so convincing as to see for oneself, and to establish a case so decisive more observation may reasonably be desired; at the same time, it can scarcely be attempted to set aside the evidence adduced, on the ground of improbability, for the fact of instinct: all that is involved in this more striking example has, we venture to think, been sufficiently attested.

A few manifestations of instinct still remain to be briefly spoken of. Chickens as soon as they are able to walk will follow any moving object.