Page:Territory in Bird Life by Henry Eliot Howard (London, John Murray edition).djvu/328

260 supplied the conditions under which, in the process of time, this complex and definite mode of behaviour has evolved.

We are sometimes told that we must seek the origin of migration in the physical changes that have occurred in the ancient history of the earth—in glacial conditions which gradually forced birds to the south, or in the "stability of the water and mobility of the land" which brought about a gradual separation of the feeding area from the breeding area—and which continued for a sufficient length of time to lead to the formation of an instinct, and that the instinct persists because it is serviceable in promoting the welfare of the race. But when we consider the lapse of time, and the changes that must have occurred in the character of the bird population—the appearance of new forms and the disappearance of the old, the ebb and flow of a given species in a given area—and bear in mind that, notwithstanding this, the migratory instinct, if not stronger, is assuredly no less strong, and the volume of migration, if not greater, is assuredly no less; in short, that the whole phenomenon is progressive rather than retrogressive, we shall find the view that the instinct owes its origin to conditions which no longer exist, receives but little encouragement.

I doubt not that, throughout the ages, geological changes have been an important factor in directing or limiting the scope of migration, and moreover are so still; just as