Page:Territory in Bird Life by Henry Eliot Howard (London, John Murray edition).djvu/368

300 abundance or scarcity, but also by the powerful gregarious impulse which waxes in proportion as the instincts connected with reproduction wane. If, then, when the sexual instinct again becomes predominant, the experience of the former season nowise affects their movements, little or no progress will be made in the expansion of the range. But just as a certain entrance into the bush and pathway through it, when once made use of in the process of building, becomes so firmly established as to form the sole highway to and from the nest, so likewise, when the impulse to seek isolation repeats itself, the bird is constrained to seek the neighbourhood wherein it had experienced the enjoyment of breeding or of birth. Thus the little that is added one year becomes the basis for further additions in the next, and new centres of distribution are continually being formed from which expansion proceeds anew.

Now as the range gradually extends into regions where the climate alternates and food at certain seasons is consequently scarce, the distance between the customary area of association and that of reproduction must perforce widen. The question then arises: How will the young that have no experience find their way to regions wherein they can endure? The forces which may have been organised to subserve the end in view are three: (1) Acquired experience, (2) tradition, (3) the gregarious instinct. The pioneer that carries the range a little further forward starts from a base where it has associated