292 TAHITI. [CHAP. XVUL 



1571-72, with the exception of the flamingoes and geese, were so 

 extremely tame, that they could be caught by the hand, or killed in any 

 number with a stick. Again, at Tristan d'Acunha in the Atlantic, 

 Carmichael* states that the only two land-birds, a thrush and a bunting, 

 were " so tame as to suffer themselves to be caught with a hand-net." 

 From these several facts we may, I think, conclude, first, that the 

 wildness of birds with regard to man, is a particular instinct directed 

 against hint, and not dependent on any general degree of caution 

 arising from other sources of danger ; secondly, that it is not acquired 

 by individual birds in a short time, even when much persecuted ; but 

 that in the course of successive generations it becomes hereditary. 

 With domesticated animals we are accustomed to see new mental 

 habits or instincts acquired and rendered hereditary ; but with animals 

 in a state of nature, it must always be most difficult to discover 

 instances of acquired hereditary knowledge. In regard to the wildness 

 of birds towards man, there is no way of accounting for it, except as an 

 inherited habit : comparatively few young birds, in any one year, have 

 been injured by man in England, yet almost all, even nestlings, are 

 afraid of him ; many individuals, on the other hand, both at the 

 Galapagos and at the Falklands, have been pursued and injured by 

 man, but yet have not learned a salutary dread of him. We may infer 

 from these facts, what havoc the introduction of any new beast of 

 prey must cause in a country, before the instincts of the indigenous 

 inhabitants have become adapted to the stranger's craft or power. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



TAHITI AND NEW ZEALAND. 



Pass through the Low Archipelago Tahiti Aspect Vegetation on the 

 Mountains View of Eimeo Excursion into the Interior Profound 

 Ravines Succession of Waterfalls Number of Wild useful Plants 

 Temperance of the Inhabitants Their Moral State Parliament con- 

 vened New Zealand Bay of Islands Hippahs Excursion to Waimate 

 Missionary Establishment English Weeds now run Wild Waiomio 

 Funeral of a Ne%v Zealand Woman Sail for Australia. 



October zoth. THE survey of the Galapagos Archipelago being con- 

 cluded, we steered towards Tahiti and commenced our long passage 

 of 3,200 miles. In the course of a few days we sailed out of the gloomy 

 and clouded ocean district which extends during the winter far from 

 the coast of South America. We then enjoyed bright and clear 

 * Linnean Transactions, vol. xii., p. 496. The most anomalous fact on this 

 subject which I have met with, is the wildness of the small birds in the Arctic 

 parts of North America (as described by Richardson, "fauna JBor.," vol. ii., 

 p. 332), where they are said never to be persecuted. This case is the more 

 strange, because it is asserted that some of the same species in their winter- 

 quarters in the United States are tame. There is much, as Dr. Richardson 



