344 THE STRUCTURE AND LIFE OF BIRDS CHAP. 
chance has come, has run away and escaped! Mr. 
Hudson in his ‘Birds in a Village tells of a Reed 
Bunting, which, in alarm for the safety of its young in 
the nest, flew out on his approach, “but only to drop 
to the ground, to beat the turf with its wings, then to 
lie gasping for breath, then to flutter on a little further, 
until at last it rose up and flew to a bush.” <A good 
naturalist has just been describing to me very similar 
behaviour on the part of a Whitethroat. The Opossum 
and the Fox excel in the art of “shamming dead.” 
Among beetles and spiders the instinct is more com- 
monly found than among rhammals or birds. 
We must not put this behaviour down entirely to 
good acting. The animal is actually afraid, often 
even paralysed by fear. In time it recovers itself, and 
seizes any opportunity of escape that offers. But the 
natural stunning effects of fear have been turned to 
account, and the temporary paralysis caused originally 
by a violent shock to the nerves has by long ages of 
natural selection been developed and improved so that 
now we may look upon it as due to a valuable pro- 
tective instinct, though helped in most, if not in all, 
cases, by actual alarm. It is very remarkable that 
this instinct should be found in creatures so remotely 
connected as Spiders, Beetles, Birds,and Mammals, and 
among birds in species belonging’ to widely separated 
families, ¢,¢. in the Reed Bunting and the Canadian 
Ruffed Grouse. 
1 See Romanes’ Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 305. 
