Page:Territory in Bird Life by Henry Eliot Howard (London, John Murray edition).djvu/81

Rh different order. But we must bear in mind that the process has been adjusted to meet the requirements of different species: the size of the territory, the period of its daily occupation, the purpose which it serves—these all depend upon manifold relationships and do not affect the principle. Why it has been differentiated in different circumstances we shall have occasion to discuss later; for the moment it is enough that at the end of its migratory journey each Ruff occupies one position on the meeting ground.

Now birds that are paired for life, whose food-supply is not affected by alternations of climate, have no occasion to desert the locality wherein they have reared their offspring, and so their movements, being subject to a routine which would tend to become increasingly definite, must in the course of time and according to the law of habit formation become organised into the behaviour we observe. Is it necessary, therefore, to seek an explanation of their tendency to remain in one place in anything so complex as an inherited disposition? Again, since we have to confess to so very much ignorance on so many points connected with the whole phenomenon of migration, may there not be some condition, hitherto shrouded in mystery, which might place so different a complexion on the corresponding aspect of migrant behaviour as to rid us, in their case also, of the necessity of appealing to an inherited disposition? Such questions are justifiable. And if the