1835.] TAMENESS OF THE BIRDS. 399 
thrush alighted on the edge of a pitcher, made of the shell of 
a tortoise, which I held in my hand, and began very quietly to 
sip the water; it allowed me to lift it from the ground whilst 
seated on the vessel: I often tried, and very nearly succeeded, in 
catching these birds by their legs. Formerly the birds appear to 
have been even tamer thanat present. Cowley (in the year 1684) 
says that the “ Turtle-doves were so tame, that they would often 
alight upon our hats and arms, so as that we could take them 
alive: they not fearing man, until such time as some of our com- 
pany did fire at them, whereby they were rendered more shy.” 
Dampier also, in the same year, says that a man in a morning’s 
walk might kill six or seven dozen of these doves. At present, 
although certainly very tame, they do not alight on people’s 
arms, nor do they suffer themselves to be killed in such large 
numbers. It is surprising that they have not become wilder ; 
for these islands during the last hundred and fifty years have 
been frequently visited by bucaniers and whalers; and the sailors, 
wandering through the woods in search of tortoises, always take 
eruel delight in knocking down the little birds. 
These birds, although now still more persecuted, do not readily 
become wild: in Charles Island, which had then been colonized 
about six years, I saw a boy sitting by a well with a switch in his 
hand, with which he killed the doves and finches as they came to 
drink. He had already procured a little heap of them for his 
dinner; and he said that he had constantly been in the habit of 
waiting by this well for the same purpose. It would appear that 
the birds of this archipelago, not having as yet learnt that man is 
a more dangerous animal than the tortoise or the Amblyrhynchus, 
disregard 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 Poly- 
borus, 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 
18 
