VI THE INSTINCT OF FLIGHT 227 



pigs. Is it really the instinct of flight which has persisted 

 from a period so remote ? It is a fact that the little creatures 

 are in other respects very confiding, and willingly permit 

 children to play with them, without betraying fear of man. 

 This peculiarity might therefore possibly be also explained 

 either as due to continued experience with regard to danger, 

 or to specially developed reflex action deeply rooted in their 

 nervous system. The former supposition is made more prob- 

 able by the fact that guinea-pigs are very quarrelsome among 

 themselves, are apt to fight viciously with one another, and 

 also to devour their young. 



On the other hand, the rapidity with which animals can 

 become tame and fearless, as soon as they are relieved of fears 

 for their safety, is proved to my mind by the following facts. 

 When I was staying in the Dutch island of Eottum, in West 

 Friesland, the water-rail (Eallus aquaticus), which is usually 

 so shy, ran about close to me in the ditches so fearlessly that 

 I could almost have caught it with my hands. This island 

 is let by the Dutch government to an egg-bailiff, whose duty 

 consists in collecting birds' eggs, and therefore no bird is 

 allowed to be hunted there ; it is especially forbidden to 

 shoot at them. On the roof of the bailiff's house, to which a 

 ladder leads for the sake of the outlook towards the Dutch 

 continent and our island of Borkum, a starling perched him- 

 self every morning close by me and twittered joyously and 

 carelessly to the world around as though he did not see me. 

 In the Delta of the Nile, and elsewhere in Egypt, I found in 

 winter the same migratory birds, which when with us are so 

 shy, extremely tame, because, on account of the Mohammedans' 

 kindness to animals, they are not pursued by them — only by 

 Europeans, especially by murderous Englishmen belonging 

 to uncultivated, but unfortunately, out of England, the pre- 

 vailing classes. In my garden every sparrow and every crow 

 knows me from afar because I persecute these birds. Once, 



