^ FEAR AN ACaUIRED INSTINCT. 175 



Galajjagos. Tliey appear to have learned caution 

 more &lowly at these latter islands than at the Falk- 

 lands, where they have had proportionate means 

 of experience ; for, besides fi-equent visits from ves- 

 sels, those Islands have been at intervals colonized 

 during the entire period. Even formerly, when 

 all the birds were so tame, it was impossible, by 

 Pernety's account, to kill the black-necked swan — 

 a bird of passage, which probably brought with it 

 the wisdom learned in foreign countries. 



I may add that, according to Du Bois, all the 

 birds at Bourbon in 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 Tris- 

 tan d'Acunha, in the Atlantic, Carmichael* states, 

 that the only two land-birds, a thrush and a bunt- 

 ing, were " so tame as to suifer 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 him, and not dependant on any 

 general degree of caution arising from other sources 

 of danger ; secondly, that it is not acquired by in- 

 dividual birds in a short time, even when much 

 persecuted, but that in the course of successive 

 generations it becomes hereditary. With domes- 

 ticated animals we are accustomed to see new 



* Linn. Trans., 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 Rich- 

 ardson, Fauna Bor., vol. ii., p. 332), where they are said never to 

 be persecuted. This case is the more strange, because it is as- 

 serted that some of the same species in their winter-quarters in 

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

 well remarks, utterly inexplicable connected with the different 

 degrees of shyness and care with which birds conceal their nests. 

 How strange it is that the EngUsh wood-pigeon, generally so wild 

 a bird, should very frequently rear its young in shrubberies close 

 to houses ! 



