A FEW REMARKS ON PROTECTIVE INSTINCT. 



By Charles Dixon. 



Safety depends on vigilance y 

 A PERSON frequently in the haunts of the feathered tribes during the 

 nesting season, will not fail to observe the numerous artifices these 

 creatures practise for the safety of their nests, eggs, or young; and 

 though these little artifices are often of a varied nature, yet but one 

 end is in view, and that the [(reservation of their treasure. But, it 

 is naturally asked, what is the cause of these peculiar motions, and 

 what prompts the birds to practise them ? Instinct, not imitation, 

 explains fully the cause, and instinct again explains the prompting 

 power. If imitation was the theory on which they worked, all birds 

 would practise these powers in the same manner peculiar to their 

 respective species. But this is not so, for many, if not all birds, at 

 some period of their existence, are called upon to exert their powers 

 in a manner befitting, and harmonising with, surrounding circum- 

 stances. Can we, therefore, explain this power by anything save a 

 protective instinct ? — an instinct which is as infallible as the 

 Almighty Power which causes the creature to manifest it ? 



I intend dividing this peculiar instinct into six divisions, and will 

 take them in the following order : — firstly, colour ; secondly, mimicry ; 

 thirdly, silence ; fourthly, alluring motions ; fifthly, pugnacious 

 motions ; and sixthly, deceptive motions. 



Colour. — If we wish to observe examples of this peculiar instinct, 

 we must stroll into the nesting grounds of the pheasant, for instance, 

 and there we shall find that the female bird, with a mother's watchful 

 care, upon leaving her charge for a short time to recruit her failing 

 strength with necessary food, covers her eggs with pieces of vegeta- 

 tion strictly harmonising with the colour of the herbage around. 

 Thus, if her nest, — or cavity, for a nest it can scarcely be called — in 

 which her eggs are deposited, is situated amongst a tangled mass of 

 bracken, the bird will cover her eggs with the same material. Should 

 her eggs be snugly ensconced in the shelter of a tuft of grass, 

 materials harmonising in colour will be used to cover them during her 

 temporary absence. When the bird is upon her charge, her own 

 plumage so closely resembles the surroundings, that, trusting in 

 these for safety, she remains faithful to it, until perhaps unwittingly 

 trodden upon by an intruder. Again, the sand grouse are striking 

 instances of this peculiar form of instinct. Their colours so harmo- 

 nise with those of the arid waste on which they live, that when the 



