OBJECTIONS TO TEE THEORY OF DESCENT, 327 



ered decorticated trees. It has lately been shown that bees, 

 instead of searching for pollen, will gladly use a very dif- 

 ferent substance, namely, oatmeal. Fear of any particular 

 enemy is certainly an instinctive quality, as may be seen 

 in nestling birds, though it is strengthened by experience, 

 and by the sight of fear of the same enemy in other ani- 

 mals. The fear of man is slowly acquired, as I have else- 

 where shown, by the various animals which inhabit desert 

 islands ; and we see an instance of this even in England, 

 in the greater wildness of all our large birds in compari- 

 son with our small birds ; for the large birds have been 

 most persecuted by man. We may safely attribute the 

 greater wildness of our large birds to this cause ; for in 

 uninhabited islands large birds are not more fearful than 

 small ; and the magpie, so wary in England, is tame in 

 Norway, as is the hooded crow in Egypt. 



SOME INSTINCTS ACQUIRED AND SOME LOST. 



P g 210 ^ ma ^ k e doubted whether any one would 



have thought of training a dog to point, had 

 not some one dog naturally shown a tendency in this 

 line ; and this is known occasionally to happen, as I once 

 saw, in a pure terrier : the act of pointing is probably, 

 as many have thought, only the exaggerated pause of an 

 animal preparing to spring on its prey. When the first 

 tendency to point was once displayed, methodical selec- 

 tion and the inherited effects of compulsory training in 

 each successive generation would soon complete the work ; 

 and unconscious selection is still in progress, as each man 

 tries to procure, without intending to improve the breed, 

 dogs which stand and hunt best. On the other hand, 

 habit alone in some cases has sufficed ; hardly any animal 

 is more difficult to tame than the young of the wild rab- 



