1835.] FEAR, AN ACQUIRED INSTINCT. 385 



time, even -when much persecuted; but that in the course of 

 successive generations it becomes hereditary. With domesticated 

 animals we are accustomed to see new mental habits or instincts 

 acquired or rendered hereditary; but with animals in a state of 

 nature, it must always be most difficult to discover instances of 

 acquired hereditary knowledge. In regard to the wildness of birds 

 towards man, there is no way of accounting for it, except as au 

 inherited habit: comparatively few young birds, in anyone year, 

 have been injured by man in England, yet almost all, even nestlings, 

 are afraid of him ; many individuals, on the other hand, both at 

 the Galapagos and at the Falklands, have been pursued and injured 

 by man, but yet have not learned a salutary dread of him. We 

 may infer from these facts, what havoc the introduction of any new 

 beast of prey must cause in a country, before the instincts of the 

 indigenous inhabitants have become adapted to the stranger's craft 

 or power. 



2 c 



