I May Add That, According To Du Bois, All The Birds At
Bourbon In 1571-72, With The Exception Of The Flamingoes
And Geese, Were So Extremely Tame, That They Could Be Caught
By The Hand, Or Killed In Any Number With A Stick.
Again,
at Tristan d'Acunha in the Atlantic, Carmichael [6] states that
the only two land-birds, a thrush and
A bunting, were "so
tame as to suffer themselves to be caught with a hand-net."
From these several facts we may, I think, conclude, first, that
the wildness of birds with regard to man, is a particular
instinct directed against _him_, and not dependent upon any
general degree of caution arising from other sources of
danger; secondly, that it is not acquired by individual birds
in a short time, even when much persecuted; but that in the
course of successive generations it becomes hereditary. With
domesticated animals we are accustomed to see new mental
habits or instincts acquired or rendered hereditary; but with
animals in a state of nature, it must always be most difficult
to discover instances of acquired hereditary knowledge. In
regard to the wildness of birds towards man, there is no way
of accounting for it, except as an inherited habit:
comparatively few young birds, in any one year, have been
injured by man in England, yet almost all, even nestlings, are
afraid of him; many individuals, on the other hand, both at the
Galapagos and at the Falklands, have been pursued and
injured by man, yet have not learned a salutary dread of
him.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 616 of 776
Words from 165124 to 165385
of 208183
