1835.] TAMENESS OF THE BIRDS. 383 



a pitcher, made of the shell of a tortoise, which I held in iny hand, 

 and began very quietly to sip the water ; it allowed me to lift it 

 from the ground whilst seated on the vessel : I often tried, and very 

 nearly succeeded, in catching these birds by their legs. Formerly 

 the birds appear to have been even tamer than at present. Cowley 

 (in the year 1684) says that the " Turtle-doves were so tame, that 

 they would often alight upon our hats and arms, so as that we 

 could take them alive : they not fearing man, until such time as 

 some of our company did fire at them, whereby they were rendered 

 more shy." Dampier also, in the same year, says that a man in a 

 morning's walk might kill six or seven dozen of these doves. At 

 present, although certainly very tame, they do not alight on people's 

 arms, nor do they suffer themselves to be killed in such large 

 numbers. It is surprising that they have not become wilder ; for 

 these islands during the last hundred and fifty years have been 

 frequently visited by bucaniers and whalers ; and the sailors, 

 wandering through the woods in search of tortoises, always take 

 cruel delight in knocking down the little birds. 



These birds, although now still more persecuted, do not readily 

 become wild. In Charles Island, which had then been colonized 

 about six years, I saw a boy sitting by a well with a switch in his 

 hand, with which he killed the doves and finches as they came to 

 drink. He had already procured a little heap of them for his 

 dinner ; and he said that he had constantly been in the habit of 

 waiting by this well for the same purpose. It would appear that 

 the birds of this archipelago, not having as yet learnt that man is 

 a more dangerous animal than the tortoise or the Amblyrhynchus, 

 disregard him, in the same manner as in England shy birds, such 

 as magpies, disregard the cows and horses grazing in our fields. 



The Falkland Islands offer a second instance of birds with a 

 similar disposition. The extraordinary tameness of the little 

 Opetiorhynchus has been remarked by Pernety, Lesson, and other 

 voyagers. It is not, however, peculiar to that bird : the Polyborus, 

 snipe, upland and lowland goose, thrush, bunting, and even some 

 true hawks, are all more or less tame. As the birds are so tame 

 there, where foxes, hawks, and owls occur, we may infer that the 

 absence of all rapacious animals at the Galapagos, is not the cause 

 of their tameness here. The upland geese at the Falklands show, 

 by the precaution they take in building on the islets, that they are 

 aware of their danger from the foxes ; but they are not by this 



