Page:Territory in Bird Life by Henry Eliot Howard (London, John Murray edition).djvu/357

Rh difficult to estimate their importance or to indicate their precise effect; the former, however, accelerate the rate of expansion, whilst the latter retard it. Those individuals that wander outwards and seek territory on the outskirts of the range we have called "pioneers." They will have advantages over others that, wandering inwards, seek isolation in congested districts, and will succeed where the latter fail; and since there is in the young an innate ability to return to the district wherein they were reared, the advantages so gained may be said to be handed on from generation to generation.

Let us now turn to the contra-phase, and endeavour to ascertain whether the gregarious instinct bears any relation to the seasonal desertion of the breeding ground. The conclusion at which we have already arrived regarding this instinct is that it forms part of the inherited nature of most species; that its functioning is suppressed when a bird is actually in occupation of a territory; and that it is serviceable in promoting the welfare of the individual. We cannot of course observe the instinct. What we observe, when reproduction is ended, is a change in the relations of different individuals; instead of arousing mutual hostility, they attract one another, from which we infer the existence of something which determines their conduct, and this "something" we speak of as an instinct.

To what does this change lead? Let us suppose that there is an area inhabited by one