THE COMMON-SENSE VIEW 177 



big-hearted bird himself. Darwin states that, 

 when he stopped at the Galapagos Islands on his 

 famous trip around the world in the Beagle, he 

 found the birds there so tame that he could push 

 them from the branches of the trees with his gun- 

 barrel. Professor Nutting, of the State University 

 of Iowa, in an article in the Popular Science Monthly 

 for August, 1903, tells of the almost absolute 

 fearlessness of the birds on the island of Laysan, 

 an isolated atoll in the Pacific west of the Hawaian 

 Islands, which he visited during that summer. 

 The island swarms with bird life petrels, alba- 

 trosses, and tropical birds of various kinds and 

 these birds betray no more fear in the presence of 

 man than if he were a cow. The albatrosses were 

 so numerous and so indifferent to the presence of 

 man that it was necessary to shove them aside 

 with one's foot to keep from stepping on them 

 when one went for a walk along the sand-stretches 

 of the shore. Professor Nutting, took photographs 

 of birds which literally posed for him in all sorts 

 of positions, and half-savage jackies amused them- 

 selves by going about and pulling the pretty tail 

 feathers from the tropical birds as they sat on 

 their nests. I have known of two cases where 

 persons, by going to the same place day after day 

 with food and kindness, have in the course of a 

 few weeks taught robins, sparrows, and other 

 birds, to lose all fear of them, so much so as to sit 

 on their shoulders and arms and eat out of their 

 hands. This is the spirit all birds would show all 

 the time toward their featherless lords if these 



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