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It is contended that “ it is quite inconceivable that any 
animal can have kept its eggs warm with the intelligent 
purpose of developing their contents.” That would be a 
conclusive argument if it were applied to the case of 
birds which had been created birds, and consequently 
could not be expected to know anything about the 
future of the eggs which they laid. But the actual bird, 
which is the product of a long process of development, 
inherits ancestral experiences, and, as some assert, has 
even an inherited memory. Then we must also make 
some allowance for the experience which each individual 
has gained during the process of incubation by which it 
has itself been developed into life. I once heard a middle- 
aged man arguing with a youth, and asserting that he 
knew nothing at all as to the point in dispute because he 
had never been a father. “ No,” said the youth, “but I 
have been a son.” And there was reason in the retort. 
The son, out of his own experience, knew something not 
only of the duties of a son, but also of a father. In 
the same way the bird which has had no experience of 
hatching eggs may have some distinct recollection of 
having been itself hatched. 
When we remember how fully equipped some young 
birds are when they emerge from the egg, we can well 
believe that in the later stages of their development within 
the egg they were not altogether unconscious of what was 
passing around them. The emergence from the egg must 
have been a startling experience. It is true that Ur. 
George Macdonald says :— 
“No wisest chicken, I presume, can recall the first moment when 
the chalk-oval surrounding it gave way, and instead of the cavern of 
limestone which its experiences might have led it to expect it found a 
world of air and movement and freedom and blue sky—with kites 
in it.’'—(Wilfred Cumbermede. chapter i.)