446 Animal Life and Intelligence. 



the forests. The kea (Nestor notabilis), a brush -tongued 

 parrot of New Zealand, which normally feeds on honey, 

 fruits, and berries, has, since the introduction of sheep, 

 taken to a carnivorous diet. It is said to have begun by 

 pecking at the sheep-skins hung out to dry ; subsequently 

 it began to attack living sheep ; and now it has learnt to 

 tear its way down to the fat which surrounds the kidneys. 

 This habit, far from being the result of elimination, is 

 rapidly leading to the elimination of the bird that has so 

 strangely adopted it. 



Now, although in these cases elimination has, I 

 think, been a quite subordinate factor, I do not adduce 

 them as convincing evidence that acquired habits are 

 hereditary. Instruction and imitation in each successive 

 generation may well have come into play. There is no 

 proof that they are even incompletely instinctive. But I 

 think that these are the kinds of activities, renewed and 

 careful observations and, if possible, experiments on which, 

 may lead to more decisive results. It would probably not 

 be difficult to ascertain how far the carnivorous habit of 

 the kea has become hereditary, and how far it is performed 

 in the absence of instruction and without the possibility of 

 imitation. 



I confess that when I look round upon the varied habits 

 of birds and mammals, when I see the frigate bird robbing 

 the fish-hawk of the prey that it has captured from the sea, 

 the bald-headed chimpanzee adopting a diet of small birds, 

 a Semnojjithecus in the Mergui Archipelago eating Crustacea 

 and mollusca, and the koypu, a rodent, living on shell- 

 fish ; when I consider the divergence of habits in almost 

 every group of organisms, the ground-pigeons, rock-pigeons, 

 and wood-pigeons, seed-eating pigeons and fruit-eating 

 pigeons ; the carrion-eating, insect-eating, and fruit-eating 

 crows ; the aquatic and terrestrial kingfishers, some living 

 on fish, some on insects, some on reptiles ; * the divergent 

 habits of the ring-ousel and the water-ousel ; and the 

 peculiar habits of blood-sucking bats ; — when I see these 



* Wallace's " Darwinism," p. 109. 



