112 Charles Darwin. 



particular instinct directed against him, and not de- 

 pendent 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 in- 

 herited habit : comparatively few young birds, in 

 any one year, have been injured by man in Eng- 

 land, yet almost all, even nestlings, are afraid of 

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

 the Galapagos and 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." 



