WCP2466

[1]¹

16, Canynge Road,

Clifton,

Bristol

8^th July 1893

Dear Mr. Wallace,

As I feared, I was not able to do much with regard to the markings of the feathers in my experimental chicks. So far as I was able to observe the wing-feathers, which were sprouting famously when I returned the little birds to the farm yard, emerged from the feather sheath already marked. But there were at this stage no colours properly so called — only a dappling of the feathers. I will try the experiment one of these days of keeping a chick for a day or two in semidarkness & note whether there is any difference of marking between him and a similar bird kept in [2] [[illeg.] light.

You will be interested to hear that my chicks showed absolutely no instinctive knowledge of the clucking of a hen. They were neither frightened nor attracted but just took no notice at all.

Watching the ducklings & chicks side by side it was interesting to note the development of instinctive activities of a minor type (such as the characteristic motion of the ducklings with their bills). There was no cross imitation that I could see.

With my eye on the alert for anything that might bear on the inheritance of acquired characteristics I find practically nothing which definitely supports the hypothesis. There are indeed these minor activities which [3] I think I mentioned before. But after all they are merely expressions of the fact that the ducks are ducks with duck actions and the chicks are chicks with chick actions. I don't find anything of which one could say "This could not possibly be the product of Natural Selection: nothing but inherited use could produce it". And that is the kind of evidence which alone will be convincing.

I confess I always thought the reported existence of instinctive knowledge i.e. inherited experience in favour of anti-Weissmanian views. But my experiments go far to convince me that such inherited knowledge is mythical. Anyhow my chicks & ducks seem to gain all this experience for themselves. Not one of them failed to go at once for bees. But a taste (or ? Smell) of the poison was enough. After some experience of bees Eristalis was not tried but avoided. Its resemblance was quite distinctly protective. [4]

I had an amusing illustration of association. I put down each morning for my ducks a large tray & on it a flat tine containing water. They ran to it drinking & washing in it. On the sixth day I put down ^{at the usual time} the tray & the tin empty. They ran to it going through all the actions of drinking and squatted in it wagging their tails & ducking their heads just as if they were washing. This they continued for ten minutes or so.

Some of my (last years) observations on the chicks will be described in the August Fortnightly.

Yours sincerely | C. Lloyd Morgan² [signature]