384 GALAPAGOS ARCHIPELAGO. [CHAP. xvn. 



.ndered wild towards man. This tameness of the birds especially 



o he wate fowl, is strongly contrasted with the habits of the same 



ecies in Tierra del Fuego, where for ages past they have been 



" c , ted bv the wild inhabitants. In the Falkland*, the sports- 



lav sometimes kill more of the upland geese m one day than 



e can carry home; whereas in Tierra del Fuego, it is nearly as 



difficult to kill one, as it is in England to shoot the common wild 



e time of Pernety (1763), all the birds there appear to have 

 been much tamer than at present ; he states that the Opetiorhynchua 

 would almost perch on his finger; and that with a wand he killed 

 ten in half an hour. At that period the birds must have been about 

 as tame as they now are at the Galapagos. They appear to have 

 learnt caution more slowly at these latter islands than at the 

 Falklands, where they have had proportionate means of experience ; 

 for besides frequent visits from vessels, 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 learnt 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 Tristan d' Acunha in the 

 Atlantic, Carmichael * states that the only two land-birds, a thrush 

 and a bunting, were " so tame as to suffer themselves to be caught 

 with a hand-net." From these several facts we may, I think, con- 

 clude, first, that the wildness of birds with regard to man, is a 

 particular instinct directed against him, and not dependent on any 

 general degree of caution arising from other sources of danger ; 

 secondly, that it is not acquired by individual birds in a short 



* Linn. Trans., vol. xii. p. 496. The most anomalous fact on this sub- 

 ject which I have met with is the wildness of the small birds in the 

 Arctic parts of North America (as described by Richardson, Fauna Bor., 

 vol. ii. p. 332), where they are said never to be persecuted. This case- 

 is the more strange, because it is asserted that some of the same species 

 iu 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 English wood-pigeon, generally so wild 

 a bird, should very frequently rear its young iu shrubberies elf'*:.- to 

 hou- 



