Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 January 1876 — Variability of Instincts. [ARTICLE]

Variability of Instincts.

Though the instincts of animals appear and disappear in such seasonable correspondence with their own wants and the wants of their offspring as to be a standing subject of wonder, they have by no means the fixed and unalterable character by which some would distinguish them from the higher faculties of the human race. They vary in the individuals as does their physical structure. Animals can learn what they did not know by instinct and forget the instinct* ive knowledge which they never learned, while their instincts will often accommodate themselves to considerable changes in the order of external events. Everybody knows it to be a common practice to hatch ducks' eggs under the common hen, though in such cases the lien lias to sit a week longer than on her own eggs;- I tried an experiment to ascertain how far the time of sitting could be interfered with in the opposite direction. Two hens became broody, on the same day and I set them on dummies. On the third day I put two chicks a day old to one of the hens. She pecked at them once or twice; seemed rather fidgety, then took to them, called them to her and entered on all the cares of a mother. The other hen was similarly tried, but with a very different result. Bhe pecked at the chickens viciously, and both that day and the next stubbornly refused to have anything to do with them.— D. A Spalding, in Popular Science Monthly.