BIRDS OF INDIA DEWAfi. 625 



THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF BIRDS. 



I have already dwelt upon the richness of the avifauna of India. 

 It is this wealth in number and variety of species which makes it so 

 valuable to the biologist. 



Grant Allen has said somewhere that there is no university like 

 the Tropics, that no man can be said to be properly educated who has 

 not passed the trojjical tripos. 



It is significant that the idea of natural selection came to both 

 Darwin and Wallace in the Tropics. This great hypothesis revolu- 

 tionized biology. But since Darwin's day the science has made com- 

 paratively little progress. This appears to be in great part due to 

 the comparative poverty of the European fauna. The Americans are 

 more fortunate in this respect. But in the New World the progress 

 of biological science has been greatly hindered by the prevailing belief 

 in America, not only that acquired characteristics are capable of 

 inheritance, but that their inheritance has played an important part 

 in evolution. 



Whether or no the explanations I suggest are the correct ones, the 

 fact remains that of late years biology has not made progress com- 

 mensurate with the impetus given it by the publication of Darwin's 

 Origin of Species. 



Nearly half a century ago Jerdon wrote in the introductory chapter 

 to his Birds of India : 



The tendency of the present age is to accumulate facts and not to generalize, 

 but we have now a sufficiency of facts and want our Lyall to explain them. 



Since Jerdon's day things have changed. At present we are almost 

 overwhelmed by theories. Many of these possess little or no value, 

 because they are founded on an insufficient basis of fact. Day by day 

 fresh theories are published, which would not have been enunciated 

 had their originators graduated in the university of the Tropics. 



As an example of the kind of absurdities to which theorizing oji 

 insufficient evidence leads, I may cite Doctor Jenner's explanation of 

 the parasitic habits of the cuckoo. He conjectured that the short stay 

 which cuckoos made in England is the true reason why they do not 

 bring up their own young, as the parent birds would be impelled, by 

 a desire to migrate, to quit their progeny before they were able to 

 provide for themselves. Had that eminent medical man paid a visit 

 to India and studied the habits of the commonest cuckoo, the koel, 

 he would not have formulated this theory. The koel stays for over 

 six months in those localities where it breeds, so that there can be 

 no question of its having sufficient time to rear up its young. 



