Page:Territory in Bird Life by Henry Eliot Howard (London, John Murray edition).djvu/209

Rh sequential order we have the following: (1) internal organic changes which lead to isolation, (2) the appropriate environment which gives rise to an impulse to remain in it, (3) the occupation of a territory which is the condition under which the instincts are rendered susceptible to stimulation, (4) the various stimuli. Each is dependent upon that which precedes it, and no part can be subtracted without failure of the biological end in view, neither can the different stages be combined in different order. So that, in considering the significance of song to an unestablished male, we are dealing with the situation at a point at which all the latent activities have not been fully felt, for all that so far has occurred is the change from sociability to isolation determined by internal organic changes. The bird has not established a territory because it has not come into contact with the appropriate environment, and it is not pugnacious because the condition which renders its instinct susceptible is absent; and so, as it wanders from place to place and hears the voices of males here or males there, it merely behaves in accordance with that part of its nature which predominates just at that particular moment—the impulse to avoid them.

But given the appropriate environment, given, that is to say, just that combination of circumstances which might bring into functional activity all the latent instincts of the intruder, and no matter how vociferous the occupant of a territory might be, it would not be preserved