MOOB-EENS IN ETDE PABK. 
119 
that smooth, olive-brown little moor-hen, going 
about with such freedom and ease in its small 
dominion, lifting its green legs deliberately, turning 
its yellow beak and shield this way and that, and 
displaying the snow-white undertail at every step, 
as it moves with that quaint, graceful, jetting gait 
peculiar to the gallinules. 
Such a fact as this — and numberless facts just as 
significant, all pointing to the same conclusion, 
might be adduced — shows at once how utterly 
erroneous is that often-quoted dictum of Darwin's, 
that birds possess an instinctive or inherited fear 
of man. These moor-hens fear him not at all; 
simply because in Hyde Park they are not shot at, 
and robbed of their eggs or young, nor in any way 
molested by him. They fear no living thing, 
except the irrepressible small dog that occasionally 
bursts into the enclosure, and hunts them with 
furious barkings to their little reedy refuge. And 
as with these moor-hens, so it is with all wild 
birds; they fear and fly from, and suspiciously 
watch from a safe distance, whatever molests them, 
and wherever man suspends his hostility towards 
them they quickly outgrow the suspicion which 
experience has taught them, or which is traditional 
among them ; for the young and inexperienced 
imitate the action of the adults they associate 
with, and learn the suspicious habit from them. 
