SIBLEY: ORNITHOLOGY 641 



went through several editions and were translated in various degrees into other 

 languages. Brehm's viewpoint was strongly anthropomorphic and sentimental 

 and, since his influence was great, he was accepted as authoritative. The first 

 serious challenge to Brehm's views was presented by Bernard Altum (b. 1824, 

 d. 1900) in his now famous classic, Der Vogel und Sein Lehen (1868). Altum 's 

 viewpoint was anti-Darwinian but also anti-anthropomorphic. He proposed a 

 strongly instinctive mode of behavior for birds and believed that their activities 

 were the result of unthinking reactions to external stimuli. 



Altum 's fame is secure as the first to expound the concept of territory in birds, 

 if for no other reason. His discussion of territorial behavior includes an analysis 

 of the function of song as a threat to other males and an invitation to females 

 and the importance of territory in reducing competition for food between mem- 

 bers of a species. (For a review of Altum's territorial concept see Mayr, 1935.) 



The reaction to Altum's ideas was immediate and mostly hostile. Brehm's 

 influence was so great that it was twenty-five years before Altum's views were 

 generally accepted in Germany. 



Despite the seemingly revolutionary and advanced concepts expressed by 

 Altum he did not attract much attention outside of Germany and even there 

 the importance of his ideas was not fully realized. This situation was probably 

 due to the general lack of interest in psychological problems among ornitholo- 

 gists during the latter part of the nineteenth century. 



Progress came slowly, and for some time it was not due to the work of orni- 

 thologists but to the investigations of psychologists and general biologists. The 

 work of C. Lloyd Morgan (b. 1852, d. 1936) was unnoticed by most ornitholo- 

 gists but gradually his ideas concerning instinctive behavior became known to 

 a few. Morgan's theory of instinctive behavior (1896) was basically mechanistic 

 and was founded in Darwinism. He believed that instincts are innate and that 

 they become fixed by selection. He also found reason to believe that an instinc- 

 tive chain of acts could be modified through the conscious activity of the animal 

 and he called this type of modification an "acquired instinct." According to 

 Morgan, an animal inherited a basic set of instincts but was able to learn by 

 experience and add to its innate instinctive behavior. 



As the concepts of psychology developed, a number of ornithologists began 

 to apply them to the study of living birds. In the United States Francis H. Her- 

 rick (1901) was among the first to utilize photography and careful observation 

 of the living bird in studying behavior. He emphasized that nest-building and 

 other avian activities are purely instinctive acts in which the bird exhibits no 

 power of choice. Arthur A. Allen's study (1914) of the red-winged blackbird 

 (Agelaius plioeniceus) was an important milestone in avian ecological and life 

 history research which influenced and set the pattern for numerous studies of 

 single species by his students and other workers. In England the study of the 

 living bird found an able and articulate protagonist in Edmund Selous (b. 1858, 

 d. 1934). His books, Bird Watching (1901), Bird Life Glimpses (1905), and 

 The Bird Watcher in the Shetlands (1905b), promoted the value of the note- 

 book and binocular as tools of ornithology. His philosophy was amusingly pre- 

 sented in verse when he wrote : 



Some men have strange ambitions. I have one: 

 To make a naturalist without a gun. 



