

THE VOYAGE OF THE BEAGLE 423 



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 rendered wild towards man. This tameness of the 

 birds, especially of the waterfowl, is strongly contrasted with 

 the habits of the same species in Tierra del Fuego, where for 

 ages past they have been persecuted by the wild inhabitants. 

 In the Falklands, the sportsman may sometimes kill more 

 of the upland geese in one day than he 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 goose. 



In the time of Pernety (1763), all the birds there appear 

 to have been much tamer than at present ; he states that the 

 Opetiorhynchus 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 be- 

 sides 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 Per- 

 nety'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, 



