INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE. 587 



such time as some of our company did fire upon them, whereby they 

 were rendered more shy.' Dampier also, in the same year, says that 

 a man in a morning's walk might kill six or seven dozen of these 

 doves. At present, although certainly very tame, they do not alight 

 upon people's hats, nor do they suffer themselves to be killed in such 

 large numbers. It is surprising that they have not become wilder ; 

 for these islands, during the last hundred and fifty years, have been 

 much visited by buccaneers and whalers ; and the sailors, wandering 

 through the woods in search of tortoises, take a cruel delight in 

 knocking down the little birds." 



Darwin also says that at Terra del Fuego a certain species of 

 goose, which is much hunted by the natives, is so wild that it 

 is a very difficult matter to kill even one, although in the Falk- 

 land Islands, where it is not often disturbed by man, a sportsman 

 may sometimes kill more in a day than he can caiTy home. This 

 goose is not migratory ; but a bird of passage, the black-necked 

 swan, brings with it to the Falkland Islands the wisdom learned 

 in more dangerous regions, and is very hard to obtain. Darwin 

 ends with the following comments : " From these several facts we 

 may, I think, conclude, first, that the wildness of birds with regard 

 to man is a particular instinct directed against him, and not de- 

 pendent on any general degree of caution arising from other sources 

 of danger ; secondly, that it is not acquired by individual birds in a 

 short time, even when much persecuted, but in the course of succes- 

 sive generations it becomes hereditary. With domesticated animals 

 we are accustomed to see new mental habits or instincts acquired, and 

 rendered hereditarj^ ; but with animals in a state of nature it must 

 always be most difficult to discover instances of acquired hereditary 

 knowledge. In regard to the wildness of birds there is no way of 

 accounting for it except as an inherited habit ; comparatively few 

 young birds, in any year, have been injured by man in England, yet 

 all, even nestlings, are afraid of him ; many individuals, on the other 

 hand, both at the Galapagos and at the Falklands, have been pursued 

 and injured by man, but yet have not learned a salutary fear of 

 him." If instincts have been acquired gradually by natural selec- 

 tion like modifications of structure we should expect to find that, 

 like other adaptations, they are in many cases more or less imperfect. 

 We were formerly taught that instinct difiers from intelligence inas- 

 much as it is an infallible guide and perfect in its results. If we 

 have sliown that it admits of improvement, we need not argue its 

 imperfection ; but a few examples of the failure of instinct may not 

 be out of place. Migratory birds often return too early in the season, 

 and perish from lack of food. The instinct which leads insects to lay 

 their eggs upon or near food which is proper for the larvae to which 

 the eggs will in time give rise, although the adult insect may feed 

 upon something quite different, is a very wonderful and beautiful 



