Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/326

312 other was quite blind, walked about freely, knocking against things. In the afternoon I uncovered its eyes, and it went round and round as if it had had sight, and had suddenly lost it. In ten minutes it was scarcely distinguishable from one that had had sight all along. When placed on a chair it knew the height to require considering, went down on its knees and leaped down. When its eyes had been unveiled twenty minutes I placed it and another twenty feet from the sty. The two reached the mother in five minutes and at the same moment.

Different kinds of creatures, then, bring with them a good deal of cleverness, and a very useful acquaintance with the established order of Nature. At the same time all of them later in their lives do a great many things of which they are quite incapable at birth. That these are all matters of pure acquisition appears to me an unwarranted assumption. The human infant cannot masticate; it can move its limbs, but cannot walk, or direct its hands so as to grasp an object held up before it. The kitten just born cannot catch mice. The newly-hatched swallow or tomtit can neither walk, nor fly, nor feed itself. They are as helpless as the human infant. Is it as the result of painful learning that the child subsequently seizes an apple and eats it? that the cat lies in wait for the mouse? that the bird finds its proper food and wings its way through the air? We think not. With the development of the physical parts, comes, according to our view, the power to use them, in the ways that have preserved the race through past ages. This is in harmony with all we know. Not so the contrary view. So old is the feud between the cat and the dog, that the kitten knows its enemy even before it is able to see him, and when its fear can in no way serve it. One day last month, after fondling my dog, I put my hand into a basket containing four blind kittens, three days old. The smell my hand had carried with it set them puffing and spitting in a most comical fashion.

That the later developments to which I have referred are not acquisitions can be in some instances demonstrated. Birds do not learn to fly. Two years ago I shut up five unfledged swallows in a small box not much larger than the nest from which they were taken. The little box, which had a wire front, was hung on the wall near the nest, and the young swallows were fed by their parents through the wires. In this confinement, where they could not even extend their wings, they were kept until after they were fully fledged. Lord and Lady Amberley liberated the birds and communicated their observations to me, I being in another part of the country at the time. On going to set the prisoners free, one was found dead—they were all alive on the previous day. The remaining four were allowed to escape one at a time. Two of these were perceptibly wavering and unsteady in their flghtflight [sic]. One of them, after a flight of about ninety yards, disappeared among some trees; the other, which flew more steadily, made a