3. Feeding and drinking.—Lay a few grains of soaked wheat upon the ground before a chick which has not yet been fed. Does it peck at them instinctively? Tap a grain with the point of a pencil; does the chick now peck at it? Does it hit the grain at the first try? Does it ever strike at a grain which is out of reach? Watch a hen with her chicks; does she teach them to peck at food? How? Do the chicks know instinctively the difference between food and grains of sand, or have they to learn? Try if a chick can distinguish between a small worm and a bit of red worsted. Are young chicks afraid of large insects? Take a chick, which has not yet drunk, to a small pool (a few drops) of water. Does it seem to know the use of the water? Induce it to peck at the water; does it now drink? How? [Pg 296] 4. The crouching-instinct.—Clap your hands suddenly and loudly near young chicks. How do the chicks behave? Does this behaviour render them less conspicuous? 5. Non-recognition of hen.—Having made the above observations on chicks hatched apart from the hen, put the chicks among their brothers and sisters with the parent hen. Do the new-comers respond, as readily as the others, to the clucking, etc., of the hen? 6. Maternal training and protection.—How many different meanings can you recognise in the different sounds of the hen’s voice? How does she call and protect the chicks when any danger threatens them? 7. The voice of the chick.—Notice the different sounds by which a chick expresses pleasure, alarm, distress, etc. 8. Preening and scratching.—At what age do chickens begin to preen their feathers, and to scratch the ground? Try to discover if these are instinctive activities, or whether they have to be learnt from the hen. 9. Change in plumage.—At what age are the down feathers replaced by the true plumage? At what age is it possible to distinguish the young cocks from the young hens? 10. External characters, etc., of adults.—Notice the flowing tail-feathers, hackles (the long feathers on the neck and loins), comb, and spurs of the cock-birds, and their absence or small size in the hens. What differences are there as regards voice? How does the hen announce that she has laid an egg? Which sex is the more pugnacious? The recently hatched chick.—The newly-hatched chick is clothed with fine down-feathers (pp. 273 and 277). It is generally exhausted by its struggles to escape from the shell, but it soon recovers, and is able to run about freely on the second day after hatching. Young birds which, like the chick, are active immediately after hatching, are said to be precocious.