THE BUNTINGS 191 



female blackheaded-bimting (E. melanocephala], namely, be disturbed 

 on the nest, more particularly after the eggs have been hatched, she 

 will fly to the ground, and commence struggling and flapping over it, 

 as though she were hurt and unable to get away, or she will even 

 lie with wings outstretched, as though dead. 1 A similar pantomime 

 is gone through by the yellowbreasted-bunting 2 (E. aureola). 



The class of deception of which the above are examples is 

 practised by various birds, but who knows the philosophy of it ? Is 

 it a conscious deception a ruse in the proper sense of the word ? 

 Possibly in some species it may now have become so, for an effect 

 often observed might well sink into the memory. But that it ever 

 occurred to any bird, as a new thing, and " with intent to deceive " 

 to go through any such actions, I for one cannot believe. But if not, 

 then in what " small dose of reason " has the instinct, if we consider 

 it such, originated ? Any design to mislead steps forth, at once, a 

 complicated process of reason, and, without such design, where is 

 there even a grain of intelligence in movements which seem to 

 be due to some morbid or surrexcited state of the bird? They 

 cannot, as it seems to me, be thus accounted for, but, on my 

 view of instincts having sometimes originated in nervous-muscular 

 movements, which have been guided by natural selection, and 

 into which some intelligence has subsequently entered, 3 I think 

 that they can be. There are certainly many degrees in the 

 perfection of the stratagem, and if careful notes were taken of 

 the behaviour of the various birds that ever, at any time, act 

 in this way, there can be no doubt that a connected chain could 

 be formed between unplanned movements of short duration, which 

 all would admit to be due to fright alone, and others which, though 

 bearing in themselves a considerable analogy with these, are long- 

 continued, and form part of an effective manreuvre, into which real 

 intelligence and some understanding of the end in view seem to enter. 



1 Naturgeschichte der Vogel Mitteleuropas, vol. iii. 2 Ibid. 



3 See my papers in the Zoologist for December 1901 and April 1902, vols. v. and vL, 

 pp. 459-462 and 136-144. 



