444 MR. W. W. FOWLER ON BIRDS OF THE VALLEY OF THE SOMME. 
1 suppose it is hardly fair to make any comparison between the 
intelligence of birds and fishes, but as an instance, I may quote 
the fact that when telegraph lines were first put up on the Scotch 
Moors, large numbers of Grouse were killed by striking themselves 
against the wires, but after a season or two the destruction ceased. 
The question comes, did the succeeding young birds inherit the 
habit of flying so as to avoid the wires, or was the habit handed 
down by animal tradition? We can scarcely imagine that in the 
case of fishes there can be any kind of tradition as to the danger 
of hooks, or baits, or that there can be any inherited caution with 
respect to feeding. The idea of transmission of special intelligence 
to the progeny of fishes seems to us almost preposterous, and yet 
if it is a fact (and there seems to be plenty of evidence in favour 
of it) that fishes in any river do gradually become more cautious, 
and more difficult of capture, how is it to be accounted for? 
This is the problem 1 now put before you, and it is a question very 
difficult to answer in any satisfactory way, because it opens the 
question as to whether acquired habits are inherited in fishes, as 
they no doubt are in the case of some higher forms of life. 
IV. 
NOTES ON BIRDS OF THE VALLEY OF THE 
SOMME. 
By W. Warde Fowler. 
Read 27 th September , 1898. 
Attracted by a note in a paper by Mr. J. H. Gurney, published 
in the last issue of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists’ Society’s 
‘Transactions,’ Mr. A. Holte Macpherson and I determined to make 
a flying visit to Amiens and Abbeville, to see the Great Reed 
Warbler and other species, if possible. We left London on 
May 28th, and next morning, thanks to instructions kindly given 
