VIII. 

 THE RECLUSE. 



THERE are regions where the presence of man is a thing 

 so totally out of experience, that the wild animals manifest 

 no sort of dread of him when he does by accident intrude 

 on their solitude. In the Galapagos Islands, perhaps the 

 most singular land in the world, all the animals appear 

 quite devoid of the fear of man. Cowley, in 1684, 

 observed that the doves there "were so tame that they 

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

 could take them alive/' Darwin saw a boy sitting by a 

 well with a switch, with which he killed the doves and 

 finches as they came to drink. He had already obtained 

 a heap of them for his dinner, and he said he had been 

 constantly in the habit of doing this. The naturalist 

 himself says that a mocking-bird alighted on the edge of 

 a pitcher which he held in his hand, and began quietly to 

 sip the water ; that a gun is superfluous, for with the 

 muzzle he actually pushed a hawk off the branch of a 

 tree : in fact, all the birds of the islands will allow them- 

 selves to be killed with a switch, or even to be caught in 

 a hat. 



Other naturalists have noticed the extreme tameness 

 of many kinds of birds at the Falkland Islands ; where, 



