Page:Territory in Bird Life by Henry Eliot Howard (London, John Murray edition).djvu/347

Rh find numerous gradations, the lesser merging step by step into the greater. Is the Swallow a migrant and the Herring-Gull not; is the Tree-Pipit a migrant and the Bunting not; must a bird cross many miles of sea or of land before it can be considered a migrant; is the length of the distance traversed a criterion of migration? Surely not. The distance traversed is merely a collateral consequence of the process as a whole.

The annual life-history of a bird presents, as we have seen, two distinct phases—the one in which the individual dominates the situation, the other in which it is subordinated to the welfare of the community. Let us take these two phases separately and endeavour to see how they may have influenced the seasonal movements; and first let us take the more important of the two, namely that one which is directly concerned in the continuance of the race. In this phase we must consider the three factors to which allusion has already been made:—(1) the internal impulse, (2) the innate ability to return to the former breeding ground, (3) the conditions in the external environment. These three work in close relation and, as I shall endeavour to show, lead to important results.

(1) If there were nothing in the inherited nature beyond an impulse to seek the breeding ground, if, that is to say, when the appropriate locality were reached, the bird took no further interest in the developing situation, the attainment of reproduction would become largely a