APrEXDix. 3G 



Q 



for on unfrequented islands, when first visited, the large 

 birds were as tame as the small. How exceedingly wary is 

 our magpie ; yet it fears not horses or cows, and sometimes 

 alights on their backs, just like the doves at the Galapagos 

 did in 1684 on Cowley. In Norway, where the magpie is 

 not persecuted, it picks up food "close about the doors, 

 sometimes walking inside the houses."* The hooded crow 

 (C. comix), again, is one of our wildest birds; yet in Egyptf 

 is perfectly tame. Every single young magpie and crow 

 cannot have been frightened in England, and yet all are 

 fearful of man in the extreme: on the other hand, in the 

 Falkland and Galapagos Islands many old birds, and their 

 parents before them, must have been frightened and seen 

 others killed; yet they have not acquired a salutary dread of 

 the most destructive animal, man.} 



Animals feigning, as it is said, Death — an unknown state 

 to each living creature — seemed to me a remarkable instinct. 

 I agree with those authors§ who think that there has been 

 much exaggeration on this subject: I do not doubt that 

 fainting (I have had a Robin faint in my hands) and the 

 paralyzing effects of excessive fear have sometimes been mis- 

 taken for the simulation of death. || Insects are most notori- 



• Mr. 0. Hewitson in "Magazine of Zoology and Botany, vol. ii, p. 311. 



+ Geoffry St. Hilaire, Anns, dee Slut., tome i\, p. 471. 



X [I have already pointed oul the refined degree to which Buch instinctive 

 dread of man is developed when it i- able accurately to discriminate what 

 constitutes safe distance from fire-arms. Binoe writing tin- passage to which 

 1 allude (see p, L97), I have met with the following observation in the letters 

 recently published bj Dr. Bae in Nature, which i.-- of interest as showing how 

 rapidlj such refinement "t discrimination i- attained:—" I maj perhaps bo 



fiermitted t<> give one of manj instances known to me of the <iuiekness "i 

 tirds in acquiring a knowledge of danger. Golden plover, when coining from 

 their breeding-places in high latitudes, vi-ii tin- islands north of Scotland in 

 hiru'i' numbers, and keep together in great packs. At first they are easilj 

 approached, but after a rerj fan shots being fired at them, the] become not 

 onlj much mors ihj, but seem to measure with great accuracy the distance 

 at which the] are safe from harm." — <<. J. K.J 

 § Couch, Illustration* of Instinct, ]>. 201. 

 Tin- nio-t ciiriiiiiH ea*e of apparent h tine simulation of death is that 

 given bj vVrangel (Travel* m Siberia, p. 812, Eng. trans.) of the geese which 

 migrate to the 1 undrai to moult, and are then qmte incapable of night, lie 

 thai feigned death so well "with their legs ana necks stretched out 

 quite stiff, that 1 pa send them by, thinking thej were dead." Hut the natives 

 Mere not thus taken in. 1 hi- simulation would not save them from fox< 



wolvei ,\.-, which I presume inhabit the Tundras: would a save them fi 



hawks f lie hi 1 * a strange one. A Lixard in Patagonia (Journal <>f 



i ■rifir.i, p. 97), "huh lives on the -ana near the coast, and is speckled 

 like it, when frightened feigned death with outstretched legs, depressed bod] , 



