258 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and the crossbill, birds of closely allied form and appearance. 

 The hawfinch, which is probably the shyest of English small 

 birds, seems to have acquired a deep mistrust of man. But the 

 crossbills, on the rare occasions when they descend from the un- 

 inhabited forests of the North into our Scotch or English woods, 

 are absolutely without fear or mistrust of human beings, whom 

 they see very probably for the first time. When animals do show 

 fear on first acquaintance, it is probably due, not to any spon- 

 taneous dread of man as man, but because they mistake him for 

 something else. " Nearly all animals/' says Sir Samuel Baker, 

 " have some natural enemy which keeps them on the alert, and 

 makes them suspicious of all strange objects and sounds that 

 might denote the approach of danger " : and it is to this that he 

 attributes the timidity of many kinds of game in districts where 

 they " have never been attacked by firearms." A most curious 

 instance of this mistaken identity occurred lately when Kerguelen 

 Island was visited by H. M. S. Volage and a party of naturalists 

 and astronomers, to observe the transit of Venus. There were 

 large colonies of penguins nesting on the island, which, though 

 the place is so little frequented by man, used at first to run away 

 up the slopes inland when the sailors appeared. They apparently 

 took the men for seals, and thus took what appeared the natural 

 way of escaping from their marine enemies. They soon found 

 out their mistake, for it is said that " when they became accus- 

 tomed to being chased by men" an experience for which the 

 sailors seem to have given them every opportunity "the pen- 

 guins acquired the habit of taking to the water at the first alarm." 

 In another colony, the nesting females would settle down peace- 

 fully on their eggs if the visitors stood still. " The whole of this 

 community of penguins (they numbered about two thousand) 

 were subsequently boiled down into ' hare-soup ' for the officers 

 and men of H. M. S. Volage," writes the Rev. A. E. Eaton, " and 

 very nice they found it." We may compare with this destruction 

 of the penguins, the letter of Hakluyt on the voyage to New- 

 foundland by Antony Parkhurst, describing with high approval 

 the business facilities for the fishing trade offered by the taine- 

 ness of the great auks called " penguins " in the passage : " There 

 are sea-gulls, musses, ducks, and many other kinds of birdes store 

 too long to write about, especially at one island named ' Penguin/ 

 where we may drive them on a planke into our ship as many as 

 shall lade her. These birds are also called penguins, and cannot 

 flie; there is more meat in one of them than in a goose. The 

 Frenchmen that fish neere the Grand Bank doe bring small store 

 of flesh with them, but do victuall themselves alwayes with these 

 birdes." 



The point of view from which the lion or tiger looks on man 



