Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 6 (1902).djvu/291



is now about thirty-one years since I first commenced the study of living birds, and about twenty years since I first began to keep them in cage and aviary. During the whole of that time I have striven to make this labour of love useful to ornithologists generally; not only by carefully noting the behaviour of the various species which I have possessed—their postures when courting, their songs, their changes of plumage, and the manner in which those changes were effected, the colouring of their soft parts, their sexual differences, their method of nesting, and the character of their eggs—but I have, I think, conclusively proved that birds, although they undoubtedly are guided by instinct (by which term I understand inherited impressions upon the brain), are nevertheless capable of reasoning, and altering their inherited habit to suit a changed environment. I have also found that a bird, when hand-reared, and constantly in the company of human beings, develops a higher order of intelligence, and consequently is capable of a keener enjoyment of life, than if permitted to grow up a savage.

The postures, bowings, and dances of birds when courting are generally exceedingly comical, and, if birds regarded them from a Zool. 4th ser. vol. IV., July, 1902.