VOL I.] Asplenium F^ilix-Fmmina. 293 



person's hat or shoulder. Quite contrary to the confiding habits 

 of these insular species was the unusual wildness of the dwarf her- 

 mit thrush and the shrike, which had come an hundred miles "or 

 more from the mainland. 



Upon the Galapagos Islands, Darwin* found the birds so tame 

 that he could approach near enough to kill them with a switch or 



his hat and he even pushed a hawk from the branch of a tree with 

 the muzzle of his gun. Upon Chatham Island (one of the group), 

 he says: '* The few dull colored birds cared no more forme than 

 they did for the great tortoises." *' Cowley (in the year 1684) 

 says that the * Turtle doves were so tame, that they would often 

 alight upon our hats and arms, so as that we could take them alive, 

 they not fearing man until such time as some of our company did 

 fire at them, whereby they were rendered more shy.*" Darwin 

 further says; *' The Falkland Islands offer a second instance of birds 

 of a similar disposition." On those islands the upland geese hav- 

 ing learned of the danger from foxes, take precautions against them 

 when nesting, but are not thereby rendered afraid of man whom 

 they have not learned to fear. 



From his own observations and those of others, Darwin con- 

 cludes: " That the wildness of birds without regard to man is a par- 

 ticular instinct directed against him^ and not dependent on any gen- 

 eral degree of caution arising from other sources of danger; sec- 

 ondly, that it is not acquired by individual birds in a short time, 

 even when much persecuted; but that in the course of successive 

 generations it becomes hereditary." 



This last clause does not coincide entirely with my own views 

 and with the habits of the wild geese in the early days of California; 

 either the individual birds did in a short time acquire the instinct of 

 fear or the instinct was latent and revived within a short period 

 and became intensified by persecution. 



ASPLENIUM FILIX-FCEMINA AS A TREE FERN. 



BY KATHARINE BRANDEGEE. 



The species of ferns having an arborescent trunk are, as is 

 well known, few in number, and nearly all tropical; those of the 

 temperate zones in most cases producing their fronds from a decum- 



T'l — F*- 



Voyage of IL M. S. Beagle. 



