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GALAPAGOS ISLANDS.

held in my hand, and began very quietly to sip the water; it allowed me to lift it from the ground while 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 "turtle-doves were so tame that they would often alight upon 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 them

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selves to be killed in such large numbers. It is surprising that they have not become wilder, for these islands during

GALAPAGOS ISLANDS.

the last hundred and fifty years have been frequently visited by buccaneers and whalers, and the sailors, wandering

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with which he killed the doves and finches as they came to drink. He had already got 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 seem that the birds of this archipelago, not having as yet learned that man is a more dangerous animal than the tortoise or the lizard (Ambly.

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rhyncus), disregard him, just as in England shy birds, such as magpies, do not mind the cows and horses grazing in the fields.

The Falkland Islands of fer a second instance of birds

THE TURTLE-DOVE.

with a similar disposition. As the birds are so tame there, where foxes, hawks, and owls occur, we may infer that the

FALKLAND ISLANDS.

absence of all beasts of prey at the Galapagos is not the cause of their tameness here. The upland geese at the Falklands show, by the precaution they take in building on the islets, that they are aware of their danger from the foxes;

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but this does not make them wild toward man. In the Falklands, the sportsman may sometimes kill more of the upland geese in one day than he can carry home; whereas in Tierra del Fuego, where the same species has for ages past been persecuted by the wild inhabitants, it is nearly as diffi

FALKLAND ISLANDS.

cult to kill one as it is in England to shoot the common

WILD GOOSE.

wild goose. In the time of Pernety (1763) all the birds at the Falklands appear to have been much tamer than at present, and about as tame as they now are at the Galapagos. Even formerly, when all the birds were so tame, it was impossible, by Pernety's account, to kill the blacknecked swan-a bird of pas sage, which probably brought

with it the wisdom learned in foreign countries.

From these several facts we may, I think, conclude that there is no way of accounting for the wildness of birds toward man except as an

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paratively few young birds, in any one year, have been injured by man in England, yet almost all, even nestlings, are afraid of him. On the other hand, many individual birds, both at the Galapagos and at the Falklands, have been pursued and injured by

THE OWL.

ATLANTIC OCEAN.

man, but yet have not learned a wholesome dread of him. From these facts, too, we may guess what havoc the introduction of any new beast of prey must cause in a country before the instincts of the native inhabitants have become adapted to the stranger's craft or power.

THE GRASSHOPPER.

THE most remarkable instance I have known of an insect being caught far from the

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land, was that of a large grasshopper (Acrydium), which flew on board when the Beagle was to windward of the Cape de Verd Islands, and when the nearest point of land not directly opposed to the trade-wind

THE GRASSHOPPER.

was Cape Blanco, on the coast of Africa, three hundred and seventy miles distant.

THE LOCUST.

SHORTLY before we arrived at Luxan (province of Mendoza, La Plata) we observed to the south a ragged cloud, of a dark reddish-brown color. At first we thought that it was smoke from some great fire on the plains; but we soon found that it was a swarm of locusts. They were flying

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