Page:Territory in Bird Life by Henry Eliot Howard (London, John Murray edition).djvu/359

Rh becomes dominant, these pioneers, or at least some of them, will revisit the area wherein formerly they associated with companions. Their offspring, however, though they will have the inherited impulse and the innate tendency, will not have the experience; how then will they behave? There can be no doubt that some will accompany the older birds, and, being led by them, will share the experience of a former generation; nor any question that others will collect together in the neighbourhood of their birthplace and, if their impulse is satisfied, will remain there so long as food is to be found. Thus the gregarious instinct, working in close relation with acquired experience, will on the one hand lead to the formation of organised movements in certain directions, whilst on the other it will lead to the formation of new areas of association which will follow in the wake of the expansion.

We have assumed, in the imaginary case which we have just taken, that the conditions in the external world are such as enable the birds to endure throughout the year—in short, that there are no complications regarding the supply of food. But we must bear in mind that so long as conditions are favourable during the period of reproduction, which is of short duration, the breeding range can continue to expand,, and that therefore, in the course of centuries, regions will come to be occupied wherein, owing to alternations of climate or physical changes in the surface of the earth,