Seed- Eaters and Flesh-Eaters. 33 



can see how they have been corrupted from insect- 

 feeders or seed-eaters to fruit-eaters. This process 

 proceeds along one or other of two lines, (i.) Either 

 they have been led to taste fruit from finding the in- 

 sects in it or upon it, and having once tasted it, they 

 become fond of it, form, in fact, an artificial taste, as 

 we have found in the case of the bullfinch. (2.) As 

 eaters of the seeds of natural plants, say, the wild 

 strawberry, which has practically no pulp, birds per- 

 formed in earlier days, before extended cultivation, a 

 great service in the dissemination of the seeds they 

 had eaten and passed through them, carrying them 

 away and re-sowing them in places very distant. But 

 when man's skill develops the pulp which, in the wild 

 state, is merely enough to protect the seeds to such 

 an extent that the fruit is practically all pulp and no 

 seeds, then the birds follow his lead, and form a love 

 for the pulp, which nature by itself never would, and 

 never could, have provided for them. Thus it may 

 be said that the process of fruit development is the 

 corruption of the birds from insect-feeders, or mere 

 seed-eaters, to devourers of soft pulp ; and the trans- 

 formation proceeds in such a way that you are hardly 

 ever safe to say that a bird has not in some degree 

 formed this depraved artificial taste by which he at 

 once, as far as he can, apes man and robs him. Human 

 conduct, enterprise, and example are thus responsible 

 for effects far beyond the merely human circle beyond 

 even the circle which he influences by domestication and 

 direct application. Analogous cases of artificial tastes 

 formed by changes of habit on animals under man's in- 

 fluence are hundredfold. Here is one: "The baboons 

 at the Cape of Good Hope have always devoured 

 scorpions, but they have lately taken to killing and 



