212 
INSTINCT. 
Chap. VII. 
in dependence on tlie situations cliosen, and on tlie 
nature and temperature of tlie country inhabited, but 
often from causes wholly unknown to us: Audubon 
has given several remarkable cases of differences in 
the nests of the same species in the northern and 
southern United States. Fear of any particular enemy 
is certainly an instinctive quality, as may be seen in 
nestling birds, though it is strengthened by experience, 
and by the sight of fear of the same enemy in other 
animals. But fear of man is slowly acquired, as I 
have elsewhere shown, by various animals inhabiting 
desert islands; and we may see an instance of this, 
even in England, in the greater wildness of all our 
large birds than of our small birds; for the large birds 
have been most persecuted by man. We may safely 
attribute the greater wildness of our large birds to 
this cause; for in uninhabited islands large birds are 
not more fearful than small; and the magpie, so wary 
in England, is tame in Norway, as is the hooded crow 
in Egypt. 
That the general disposition of individuals of the same 
species, born in a state of nature, is extremely diversified, 
can be shown by a multitude of facts. Several cases 
also, could be given, of occasional and strange habits in 
certain species, which might, if advantageous to the 
species, give rise, through natural selection, to quite new 
instincts. But I am well aware that these general state¬ 
ments, without facts given in detail, can produce but a 
feeble effect on the reader’s mind. I can only repeat my 
assurance, that I do not speak without good evidence. 
The possibility, or even probability, of inherited 
variations of instinct in a state of nature will be 
strengthened by briefly considering a few cases under 
domestication. We shall thus also be enabled to see 
the respective parts which habit and the selection of so- 
