Chick

“ But it is only a poor living which is to be earned by scratching. The thrifty housewife sees to it that her brood are well fed. At regular times she comes out of the house to feed them with grain, as she is doing now.
The baby hears the mother's voice saying, in what is the French equivalent, "Here chick-chick-chick," and creeps swiftly to the door. He, too, tries to call "chick-chick." He watches the odd creatures eagerly as they gobble up the seed. They stand about in a circle, heads all together in the centre, bobbing up and down as long as any food remains. ”

“ It is, indeed, extremely easy to miss a chick, even when one seems to see the whole ledge very plainly. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that one of the two on my ledge is gone. My own little one—still under its mother's left wing—is the only one left there now. After a while it comes out, and the mother, as she stands by it, from time to time just stirs or nibbles the feathers of its face with the end of her bill—an action which has all the spirit of wiping a child's face or nose. The father now walks up, stops in front of the chick, bends down its head, and jodels. ”

“ Chick-a-dee-dee, chick-a-dee-dee,
Here's a dear little bird singing chick-a-dee-dee.
"Oh, mother, do get him some stockings and shoes,
And a nice little frock, and a hat if you choose;
I wish he'd come into the parlor, and see
How warm we would make him, poor chick-a-dee-dee!
Chick-a-dee-dee, chick-a-dee-dee,
How warm we would make him, poor chick-a-dee-dee!"
"There is One, my dear child, though I cannot tell who,
Has clothed me already, and warm enough too.
Good morning! Oh, who are so happy as we?" ”

“ In what does the interest taken by a bird—let us say by one of these guillemots—in a chick which is not its own originate? Does not the sight of it arouse, by association of ideas, all those feelings which, but shortly before, its own chick was daily arousing? And if this be so, does it not in a manner mistake it for its own? It would be interesting, were something to happen to the parents of this little chick, to see if it would be fed and taken care of by any of the other birds on the ledge. ”

“ And although almost all assert that the male and his semen are the efficient cause of the chick, still it must be admitted, that no one has yet sufficiently explained how it is so, particularly in our common hen’s egg.{355}
EXERCISE THE FORTY-NINTH. The inquiry into the efficient cause of the chick is one of great difficulty. ”

“ A hen whose chicks are scattered in search of food, upon seeing a hawk, utters a note of warning which we have all heard, and the young scamper to her for protection beneath her wings. When she has laid an egg, Cut-cut-cut-cut-ot-cut! announces it from the nest in the barn. When the chicks are hatched, her cluck, cluck, cluck, calls them from the nest in the wide world, and her chick, chick, chick, uttered quickly, selects for them the dainty which she has found, or teaches them what is proper for their diet. ”

“ If the included chick be well forward, and moves about with alacrity, the egg not only rolls over but even dances in the water. And if you apply the egg to your ear for several days before the hatching, you may hear the chick within kicking, scratching, and even chirping. When the hen that is sitting hears these noises, she turns the eggs and lays them otherwise than they were, until the chicks, getting into a comfortable position, become quiet; even as watchful{222} mothers are wont to treat their infants when they are restless and cry in their cradles. ”

“ From what has now been said it appears that the chick—and we shall show that it is not otherwise in all other animals—arises and is constituted as it were by a principle or soul inherent in the egg, and that in the same way the proper aliment is sought for and is supplied within the egg; whereby it comes that the chick is not dependent on its mother in the same way as plants are dependent on the ground ”

“ After the chick is hatched it takes the place of the egg and is carried around in this queer receptacle. When the chick wants food it utters a cry. Thereupon the parent bends its neck down, and the little one thrusts its head into the parental mouth to help itself to regurgitated food. ”

“ The clear cold air and the exercise of flying after his night's sleep had given Chick a good healthy appetite, and he had come out for his breakfast.
He liked eggs very well, and there were, as he knew, plenty of them on the birch trees, for many a time he had breakfasted there. Eggs with shiny black shells, not so big as the head of a pin; so wee, indeed, that it took a hundred of them or more to make a meal for even little Chick. ”

“ The chick, therefore, is born spontaneously, and makes its escape from the eggshell through its own efforts. That this is the case appears from unquestionable arguments: when the shell is first chipped the opening is much smaller than accords with the beak of the mother, but it corresponds exactly to the size of the bill of the chick, and you may always see the shell chipped at the same distance from the extremity of the egg and the broken pieces, especially those that yield to the first blows, projecting regularly outwards in the form of a circlet. ”

“ The chick wants air sooner than food, for it has still some store of nourishment within it; in which case the chick, by his chirping, gives a sign to his mother of the necessity of breaking the shell, which he himself cannot accomplish by reason of the hardness of the shell and the softness of his beak, to say nothing of the distance of the shell from the beak, and of the position of the head under the wing. ”

“ After that the hen treated him a little better—but she often scolded him and clawed him, and he led a sad life. Many times, when the children flung crumbs to her and her brood, she would drive this poor little half-starved chick away, and he would run and hide in the currant bushes, and hang his head, and droop his small tail, and may-be wish that he had never been hatched. ”

“ A four days’ chick will jump down a distance eight times his own height without hurting himself a bit. If one takes a chick two or three weeks old who has never had a chance to jump up or down, and puts him in a box with walls three times the height of the chick’s back, he will find that the chick will jump, or rather fly, nearly, if not quite, over the wall, flapping his wings lustily and holding on to the edge with his neck while he clambers over. Chicks one day old will, in about 57 per cent of the cases, balance themselves for five or six seconds when placed on a stiff perch. ”

“ Spencer has made the following unqualified statement. "A chick, immediately it comes out of the egg, not only balances itself and runs about, but picks up fragments of food, thus showing us that it can adjust its muscular movements in a way appropriate for grasping an object in a position that is accurately perceived." The fact is, that, on emerging from the shell, the chick can no more do any thing of all this than can the new-born child run about and gather blackberries. ”

“ What, moreover, it is in the blood and punctum saliens, or first formed particle of the chick, whence all the other parts arise with their appropriate structures and arrangements; what in the embryo or chick itself whereby it becomes more or less robust and agile, attains to maturity with greater or less rapidity, and lives with various degrees of health, for a longer or shorter period?
Nor is the inquiry very different which goes to ascertain what sex the male and the female, or the cock and the hen, confer upon the prolific egg ”

“ Many folks get into the nest, and sit as hard upon it as they can, concluding it will produce a golden chick. As I shall not be a feather the better for it, I hate that game-breed, and prefer the old hen Peace and her dunghill brood. ”

“ For the formative faculty of the chick rather acquires and prepares its own material for itself than only finds it when prepared, and the chick seems to be formed and to receive its growth from no other than itself. ”

“ Had the egg, instead of being broken by the cook, been left under the hen for a certain time, the yolk would have passed by infinitesimal gradations through a series of forms ending in the chick, and by similarly infinitesimal gradations would have arisen those functions which end in the chick breaking its shell; and which, when it gets out, show themselves in running about, distinguishing and picking up food, and squeaking if hurt. When did the feeling begin, and how did there come into existence that power of perception which the chick's actions show? ”

“ Good night, Daddy dear, and don't be annoyed because your chick is wanting to scratch for herself. She's growing up into an awfully energetic little hen—with a very determined cluck and lots of beautiful feathers (all due to you) . ”

“ At 12 o'clock a chick moves out from under the mother, and leaves the nest. It is quite active, and has the general appearance of a young chicken, being fluffy and of a yellowish grey colour, speckled with black. At 12.40 the second young one appears, pushing itself out from under the mother bird as she rises a little in the nest. ”

“ Looking down through the glasses at the chick, it appears to me to be feathered, but to have, at least on the back, a close crop of down projecting above them. The beak is nothing like so long as the parents', either actually or in proportion to the chick's size, or the size of its head. The feet, however, are relatively quite as large, or even larger. ”

“ But the chick is born with the pecking instinct, and hits at the very first shot.
Yet the chick does not know what to peck at. He simply lets drive at whatever chances to catch his eye—a bit of gravel it may be, or something very nasty, or even a fleck of light on a blade of grass. What is good to eat and worth pecking at, he has to learn by trying just at you do. ”

“ For the hen hearing the chirping of the chick within, and knowing thereby the necessity of now breaking the shell in order that the chick may enjoy the air which has become needful to it, or if you will, you may say, that desiring to see her dear offspring, she breaks the shell with her beak, which is not hard to do, for the part over the hollow, long deprived of moisture, and exposed to the heat of incubation, has become dry and brittle. The chirping of the chick is consequently the first and principal indication of the creature desiring to make its escape, and of its requiring air. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Chick′en-pox, a contagious febrile disease, chiefly of children, and bearing some resemblance to a very mild form of small-pox; Chick′ling, a little chicken; Chick′weed, a species of stitchwort, and one of the most common weeds of gardens and cultivated fields—for making poultices, and for feeding cage-birds, which are very fond of its leaves and seeds.—Mother Carey's chicken, a sailor's name for the Stormy Petrel; No chicken, one no longer young. [A.S. cicen; cf. Dut. kieken, Ger. küchlein.]
Chick-pea, chik′-pē, n. ”

“ For four or five days you can jump at the chick, grab at it with your hands, etc., without disturbing it in the least. A chick twenty days old, however, although he has never been touched or approached by a man, and in some cases never seen one except as the daily bringer of food, and has never been in any way injured by any large moving object of any sort, will run from you if you try to catch him or even get very near him. There is, however, even then, nothing like the utter fear described by Spalding. ”

“ Now, too, the bones of the chick have begun to form, and we clearly perceive the projection of the wings and the stump of the tail, while the pupil of the eye is quite clear and distinct. Larger and larger the creature grows, until it fills all the space, and has to be doubled up in a very curious manner, with the feet and the head brought together, and the bill close to the shell, ready to be used as the instrument of liberation. ”

“ Nevertheless the student of development finds, not only that the chick commences its existence as an egg, primarily identical, in all essential respects, with that of the Dog, but that the yelk of this egg undergoes division—that the primitive groove arises, and that the contiguous parts of the germ are fashioned, by precisely similar methods, into a young chick, which, at one stage of its existence, is so like the nascent Dog, that ordinary inspection would hardly distinguish the two. ”

“ Any one who eats three or four eggs at breakfast consumes that number of embryo chicks.
All the materials which enter into the legs, bones, feathers, bill, etc., of the new-born chick, exist in the egg, as nothing is derived from outside. ”

“ HETTIE'S CHICKEN.
What can be prettier than a brood of chickens with a good motherly hen, like the one in this picture! See how the little chicks nestle and play about their mother! and see what a watchful eye she has over them! But some chickens do not have such kind mothers, as you shall hear. ”