Page:Territory in Bird Life by Henry Eliot Howard (London, John Murray edition).djvu/365

Rh those variations which can be so modified as to be in useful relation to the new environmental circumstances are seized upon by natural selection and, being transmitted, form the foundation of a specific inherited response, no longer dependent upon, though operating in close relation with the primitive response whence originally it sprang. Thus the primordial instinct becomes so organised as to serve a secondary purpose, that of rendering secure a means of access to a certain food supply. In the course of evolution species were bound to arise which, owing to some peculiar conditions, derived greater advantage from living solitary than from living in society. Does it then follow, because such species manifest no inclination to live in society, that the instinct never has played any part in their lives? Or because the primary purpose has lapsed, does it follow that the secondary no longer exists?

Let me recapitulate the principal considerations which I have discussed in this chapter.

Though I have been advancing a theory, and though I have taken much for granted, yet it will. I think, be admitted that both the theory and what has been taken for granted rest on observational grounds. As our starting-point we have a bird whose inherited nature alternates according to the season, and in whose nature we can distinguish two contra-phases—the one to live in society, the other to live solitary. While both have their 'part to play in furthering the