Reviewing The Facts
Here Given, One Is Astonished At The Amount Of Creative Force,
If Such An Expression May Be Used, Displayed On These Small,
Barren, And Rocky Islands; And Still More So, At Its Diverse
Yet Analogous Action On Points So Near Each Other.
I have
said that the Galapagos Archipelago might be called a satellite
attached to America, but it should rather be called a
group of satellites, physically similar, organically distinct,
yet intimately related to each other, and all related in a
marked, though much lesser degree, to the great American
continent.
I will conclude my description of the natural history of
these islands, by giving an account of the extreme tameness
of the birds.
This disposition is common to all the terrestrial species;
namely, to the mocking-thrushes, the finches, wrens, tyrant-
flycatchers, the dove, and carrion-buzzard. All of them are
often approached sufficiently near to be killed with a switch,
and sometimes, as I myself tried, with a cap or hat. A gun
is here almost superfluous; for with the muzzle I pushed a
hawk off the branch of a tree. One day, whilst lying down,
a mocking-thrush alighted on the edge of a pitcher, made of
the shell of a tortoise, which I held in my hand, and began
very quietly to sip the water; it allowed me to lift it from
the ground whilst seated on the vessel: I often tried, and
very nearly succeeded, in catching these birds by their legs.
Formerly the birds appear to have been even tamer than at
present. Cowley (in the year 1684) says that the "Turtledoves
were so tame, that they would often alight on our hats
and arms, so as that we could take them alive, they not fearing
man, until such time as some of our company did fire at
them, whereby they were rendered more shy." Dampier
also, in the same year, says that a man in a morning's walk
might kill six or seven dozen of these doves. At present,
although certainly very tame, they do not alight on people's
arms, nor do they suffer themselves to be killed in such large
numbers. It is surprising that they have not become wilder;
for these islands during the last hundred and fifty years have
been frequently visited by bucaniers and whalers; and the
sailors, wandering through the wood in search of tortoises,
always take cruel delight in knocking down the little birds.
These birds, although now still more persecuted, do not
readily become wild. In Charles Island, which had then
been colonized about six years, I saw a boy sitting by a well
with a switch in his hand, with which he killed the doves
and finches as they came to drink. He had already procured
a little heap of them for his dinner, and he said that he had
constantly been in the habit of waiting by this well for the
same purpose. It would appear that the birds of this
archipelago, not having as yet learnt that man is a more
dangerous animal than the tortoise or the Amblyrhynchus,
disregard him, in the same manner as in England shy birds, such
as magpies, disregard the cows and horses grazing in our fields.
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