The Donaldsonville Chief

Instinct in Chickens.
From an essay recently read before the British Association by one of its members, we make the following interesting extract:
A chicken at the end of six minutes after having its eyes unveiled, followed with its head the movements of a fly twelve inches distant; at ten minutes, the fly coming within reach of its neck was seized and swallowed at the first stroke; at the end of twenty minutes it had not attempted to walk a step: It was then placed on rough ground within the sight of a hen, with chickens of its own age. After standing chirping for about a minute, it went straight toward the hen, displaying as keen a perception of the qualities of the outer world as it was ever likely to possess in after life. It never required to knock its head against a stone to discover there was "no road that way." It leaped over the smaller obstacles that lay in its path, and ran around the larger, reaching the mother in as near a straight line as the nature of the ground would permit. Thus it would seem that, prior to experience, the eye—at least the eye of the chicken—perceives the primary qualities of the external world, all arguments of the purely analytical school of psychology to the contrary notwithstanding.
Not less decisive were experiments on hearing. Chickens hatched and kept in the dark for a day or two, on being placed in the light nine or ten feet from a box in which a brooding hen was concealed, after standing chirping for a minute or two, uniformly set off straight to the box in answer to the call of the hen which they had never seen and never before heard. This they did struggling through the grass and over rough ground, when not able to stand steadily on their legs. Again, chickens that from the first had been denied the use of their eyes by having hoods drawn over their heads while yet in the shell, were while thus blind made the subject of experiment. These, when left to themselves, seldom made a forward step; their movements were round and round and backward; but when placed within five or six feet of the hen mother, they, in answer to her call, became much more lively, began to make little forward journeys, and soon followed her by sound alone, though, of course, blindly. Another experiment consisted in rendering chickens deaf for a time by sealing their ears with several folds of gum paper before they had escaped from the shell. These, on having their ears opened when two or three days old, and being placed within call of the mother, concealed in a box or on the other side of a door, after turning round a few times ran straight to the spot whence came the first sound they had ever heard. Clearly, of these chickens it can not be said that sounds were to them at first but meaningless sensations.
One or two observations favorable to the opinion that animals have an instinctive knowledge of their enemies may be taken for what they are worth. When twelve days old one of my little proteges running about beside me, gave the peculiar chirp whereby they announce the approach of danger. On looking up, a sparrow-hawk was seen hovering at a great height overhead. Again, a young hawk was made to fly over a hen with her first brood of chickens, then about a week old. In the twinkling of an eye most of the chickens were hid among grass and bushes. And scarcely had the hawk touched the ground, about twelve yards from where the hen had been sitting, when she fell upon it, and would soon have killed it outright. A young turkey gave even more striking evidence. When ten days old it heard the voice of the hawk for the first time, and just beside it. Like an arrow from the bow it darted off in the opposite direction, and, crouched in a corner, remained for ten minutes motionless and dumb with fear. Out of a vast number of experiments with chickens and bees, though the results were not uniform, yet in the great majority of instances the chickens gave evidence of instinctive fear of these sting-bearing insects.