kingfisher or a young osprey
would, in due time, dive for fish, or a young marsh hawk catch mice
and birds, or a young fox or wolf or coon hunt for its proper prey
without the parental example, admits of no doubt at all; but they
would each probably do this thing earlier and better in the order of
nature than if that order were interfered with.

The other day I saw a yellow-bellied woodpecker alight upon a decaying
beech and proceed to drill for a grub. Two of its fully grown young
followed it and, alighting near, sidled up to where the parent was
drilling. A hasty observer would say that the parent was giving its
young a lesson in grub-hunting, but I read the incident differently.
The parent bird had no thought of its young. It made passes at them
when they came too near, and drove them away. Presently it left the
tree, whereupon one of the young examined the hole its parent had made
and drilled a little on its own account. A parental example like this
may stimulate the young to hunt for grubs earlier than they would
otherwise do, but this is merely conjecture. There is no proof of it,
nor can there be any.

The mother bird or beast does not have to be instructed in her
maternal duties: they are instinctive with her; it is of vital
importance to the continuance of the species that they should be. If
it were a matter of instruction or acquired knowledge, how precarious
it would be!

The idea of teaching is an advanced idea, and can come only to a being
that is capable of returning upon itself in thought, and that can form
abstract conceptions--conceptions that float free, so to speak,
dissociated from particular concrete objects.

If a fox, or a wolf, for instance, were capable of reflection and of
dwelling upon the future and upon the past, it might feel the need of
instructing its young in the matter of traps and hounds, if such a
thing were possible without language. When the cat brings her kitten a
live mouse, she is not thinking about instructing it in the art of
dealing with mice, but is intent solely upon feeding her young. The
kitten already knows, through inheritance, about mice. So when the hen
leads her brood forth and scratches for them, she has but one
purpose--to provide them with food. If she is confined to the coop,
the chickens go forth and soon scratch for themselves and snap up the
proper insect food.

The mother's care and protection count for much, but they do not take
the place of inherited