1092 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



Ritter maintains that the bird itself was in part to blame. It was 

 outrageously gregarious, sometimes breaking down trees with the 

 weight of its numbers. It often nested too early, before the snows 

 were over. It committed race-suicide by over-population. "While 

 upon civilised man there primarily rests the responsibility for this 

 zoological tvdigedy, the birds themselves must be recognised as 

 having been closely accessory." But even in these cases we cannot 

 feel convinced that the indictment is quite fair when man is in the 

 plot. For man is an agent of unpredictable ingenuity and with an 

 effrontery of ruthlessness, and it is hardly a misadaptation to be 

 baulked and baffled by him. Is it really a misadaptation in the 

 gentle Franklin Grouse that it composedly watches man's approach 

 to within a few feet? "One sat sedately on a limb while a revolver 

 was emptied at her." What imperfection! 



Other alleged instances of self-injury are found among mammals. 

 Hornaday mentions five causes that led to the practical extermina- 

 tion of the American bison, and while four of these point to man's 

 ruthlessness and shortsighted greed, the remaining one is "the 

 phenomenal stupidity of the animals themselves and their indiffer- 

 ence to man". Ritter says: "We are obliged to conclude that the 

 nearly complete extinction that has befallen the once widespread, 

 abundant, and valuable species of elephant-seals is duedn no small 

 degree to the stupidity of the creatures themselves." But it must 

 be remembered that the elephant-seal's experience of man was not 

 more than a century old; and that a tradition of timidity is not 

 to be expected in giants. If animals have not known fear for tens 

 of thousands of years, is it much of a misadaptation that they 

 remain unafraid when some men intrude from a boat ? 



We are not impressed by stories of mammals smothering one 

 another in a panic, of a pony becoming stiff with shock at its first 

 meeting with a motor-car, of baboons over-eating themselves, or 

 of a Rhesus monkey clinging for five weeks to the shrivelled remains 

 of her offspring. If these are the best instances of misadaptation, 

 the indictment is not very serious. 



Yet what of the suicide of the lemmings, which, obeying their 

 instinctive impulse to go straight on until they find pasturage, 

 continue their mass movement into the sea and are drowned in 

 large numbers. But the trekking instinct often works well, and it 

 should be a rule in the study of animal behaviour not to infer 

 stupidity or misadaptation from occasional instances of an instinct 

 proving fatal. W^hen a piece of routine has become thoroughly 

 enregistered and instinctive it is difficult for intelligence to take 

 the reins. 



We do not maintain, as we hinted at the outset, that all adapta- 

 tions are perfect, but we do not think that the evidence of serious 

 imperfection is strong. Against the imperfections that evolution has 



