FROM THE ANIMALS' POINT OF VIEW 273 
and their Ways , remarks on the “ curious and in- 
explicable fact that certain animals and birds exhibit 
a peculiar shyness of human beings, although they 
are only exposed to the same conditions as others 
which are more bold.” He instances the wildness of 
the curlew and the golden plover, and contrasts it 
with the tameness of swallows and wagtails. The 
reason does not seem far to seek. The first are 
constantly sought for food, the latter are left undis- 
turbed. Perhaps the best instance of such a contrast 
is that of the hawfinch and the crossbill, birds of 
closely allied form and appearance. The hawfinch, 
which is probably the shyest of English small birds, 
seems to have acquired a deep mistrust of man. But 
the crossbills, on the rare occasions when they descend 
from the uninhabited forests of the North into our 
Scotch or English woods, are absolutely without fear 
or mistrust of human beings, whom they see very 
probably for the first time. When animals do show 
fear on first acquaintance, it is probably due, not to 
any spontaneous dread of man as man, but because 
they mistake him for something else. “ Nearly all 
animals,” says Sir Samuel Baker, “ have some natural 
enemy which keeps them on the alert, and makes 
them suspicious of all strange objects and sounds that 
might denote the approach of danger : ” and it is to 
this that he attributes the timidity of many kinds of 
game in districts where they “have never been 
attacked by firearms.” A most curious instance of 
this mstaiken identity occurred lately when Kerguelen 
