The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-01-16 00:00:00

INSTINCT. -
(From Monday's Times.)

We have received same additional letters on the
instißct of birds. The Rev. F. 0. Morris of Nunburn-
holme Rectory, Yorkshire, writes :

"I had no thought whatever of intruding another word of
my own on the above subject on the notice of your readers
nor should I have presumed to do so, but that I have received
the following letter from Mr. C. E. Deadnell, of the Royal
Horse Artillery, dated from Furlough-house, in the county
of Galway, which bears so strikingly on the letters of your
two correspondents, Mr. Weld-Blundell and Colonel Stuart-
Wortley, in The Times of Jan. 6, that I feel sure it will be of
interest to those gentlemen, and probably to many others
also, who, like them and myself, 'have pleasure,' as David
had, in the wonderful works' of the great God of Nature :
" ' Will you permit me to give you some of my experience
In this matter, as I think it may interest you and cast a
strong light upon the subject? When serving at Peothawur,
In the year 1866, I obtained leave of absence and went away
into Cashmere to shoot. One evening, when near dusk, I
took a stroll from my tent and came across an old red bear,
which I eventually stalked and got a couple of bullets into,
but without killing him. He bolted into the jungle, and as
night was fast closing in I did not follow him up, but care-
fully marked his point of entry into the jungle by blood-
spots on the grass and bushes, with a view to tracking him
next morning. At daylight next day I started off with any
native shikary, and we commenced tracking our friend.
The jungle was very thick in places, but by keeping the
track of the bear we managed to get through. After we
had gone, as nearly as I could judge, about a mile, we came
to a place where the poor brute had evidently rested, and
here the spots of blood were so fresh in appearance that I
made sure we were close upon him However, it turned
out that it was not so. We commenced tracking again,
and after we had procejed about another half-mile my
shikary halted, and called my attention to a flock of
vultures soaring round and round, most of them at an
enormous height, but some within a couple of hundred
yards of the tops of the trees ; at the same time he
cautioned me to look out, as we were close upon the bear,
and he pointed again to the vultures and grinned all over
his face with evident confidence in his assertion. Sure
enouch another 200 yards brought us up with the bear, which
was still going on slowly in a very weak state. As soon as
he heard us lie turned round with a very ugly gi owl, and I
gave him the fioishing bullet at about 25 ) aids, putting him
out of his misery. I was so much struck with what my
shikary had said about the vultures that I determined to
watch and see what would happen ; so I retired to some
little distance, and in less than a quarter of an hour all the ,
large trees around about the place were full of them, and
very few minutes more sufficed to bring them down to the
body itself. Not wishing the skin to be spoilt, I hunted off
these filthy scavengers, and, after removing poor Bruin's
skin, left them to enjoy their feast. Next day nothing was
left but the skeleton. I would particularly notice that this
happened in a cold climate just under the snows, where
vultures are not nearly so common as in the plains, and
when it would take considerable time for any flesh to
putrefy. Moreover, the natives commonly track out wounded
game by these vultures, and my shikary was most positive
in his statement that they invariably find out a wounded
animal. I think it best to give you the simple facts as they
occurred, so as to allow you to form your own conclusions as
I did. You must not not suppose that the jungle was too
thick for birds to see through it. Large trees were scarce,
though the underwood was thick bush in many places, and
often the bear must have passed open spots of from 20 to 50
yards in extent.'
"My own notion about this statement—but it is only my
own, and need therefore be taken only for what it is worth—
is that in such cases the vultures are guided by the scent of
the blood, which naturally must, more or less rapidly, turn
to decomposition where it has dropped, or, even if not, must
have some scent which they perceive.
"The bear appears to have fallen in the jungle or brush.
wood, and though there were open spaces here and there
which, no doubt, ho must have crossed, so must other un-
wounded animals have done the same every day in the year.
Why, then: did not the birds,
"'From their cairn on high,'

sweep down upon them, as eagles or falcons might do on
lesser living animals? Why do they only follow the trace
and track of those that are wounded? Surely, because of
some acute sense of their own, of which we can take no
cognizance, they smell the taint, follow it up instinctively,
"'And down the lone vale sail away,'
till they are in at the death '
"Nay, further yet than that, I am inclined to think, so
often do we read of the birds in question bearing down on
even wounded animals as soon, or almost as soon, as death
has begun to work in their frame, and there must be some
emanation or exhalation from them at such a time, which,
though utterly imperceptible and uncognizable by us, is
perceived at once by these birds of prey, which are thereby
conducted unerringly to the meal which they are aware is
almost ready for them. Who knows? I smell the blood," is
part of even an old nursery tale.
"With regard to the main point at issue, Mr. Weld-Blun
dell does not explain how it only is, as he truly says, for the
'dying mule or camel• that the birds are on the lookout so
far overhead, and not for lives ones."
"P. M." writes : •
" I could easily furnish, in connexion, no doubt, with many
other of your readers, facts from my own observation and
experience illustrative of the thinking and reasoning powers
of dogs and other animals, including birds; some of them
not less conclusive than those related by Colonel Wortley,
but I will not trouble you with these. The point on which I
-ould wish to say a word is the instinct,' or whatever else
Is to be called, which leads vultures and other birds of
prey with such unerring accuracy to their food. Both Mr.
Blundell and Colonel Wortley seem to ascribe it entirely to
the great range and power of their sight, attributing little or
nothing to the sense of smell. The arguments by which
they maintain this opinion do not appear to me to be con-
clusive.
"Mr. Blundell says, In very dry climates the newly-
killed carcass. thouehwholly without smell, is at once found
out by birds of prey, where seemingly none exist.' Colonel
Wortley, after describing the way in which the vultures de-
voured within an hour and a half an animal which he had
shot and left lying on the ground, goes on to say, I tried the
experiment often afterwards, and always with the same
result. In these cases no taint of decomposition had set in,
and the only other possible alternative (to the assumption
that they had descried the carcass from a vast distance)
would be that the birds could have heard the report of my
gun and been attracted by it.'
"In both these extraots the writers are, in fact, assuming
the point which has to be proved. All that they really
know is that there was no smell perceptible by them; but
that does not prove that there was none perceptible by the
vultures. They would find it difficult to 'wind' a part-
ridge 20 yards off, which a pointer does with ease, or to
trace, as a beagle does, the scent of a hare on ground which
It had passed over a quarter of an hour before. I have
known horses refuse to pass a butcher's shop, frightened by
the smell of the freshly-killed meat, at a distance at which
I could not detect the faintest odour; I had one which in-
variably did so. The following incident may be worth re-
lating, as) earing closely on this subject. The person to
whom it happened is an intimate acquaintance of my own,
still living. When quite a girl, in India, she was watching
by the bedside of a young friend in the last stage of fever.
Towards morning, when she thought the patient was still
sleeping, she was alarmed by a flapping of wings at the open
window-doors, and, turning, saw three or four large birds—
doubtless of the vulture tribe—only restrained from entering
the chamber by fear of the ftghts within. She vainly tried
to drive them away, they still hung about the opening; and
when at length assistance came, the girl by whom she had
been watching was found dead. It seems difficult to resist
the conviction that the birds were attraeted by the effluvium
from the corpse, though so recently dead. Of course lam
not iviorant of the conclusion to which M. Audubon was led
by his experiments ; nevertheless, it seems, on the whole,
most probable from such evidence as can be procured that,l
these birds are endued with a faculty of smell as flinch more -1
acute than ours as their faculty of shill confessedly is, and
that both are alike useful in guiding them to their prey."
"A Physiologist" writes :
"There never was anything better written on Instinct than
the practical example which Falstaff gives of its influence in
excuse for his cowardice (which, by-the-by, is truly instinc-
tive) ',Why, thou knowest fam as valiant as Hercules ; but
beware, instinct. Instinct is a great matter ; I was a coward
on instinct.' (lien. 11," , p 1 , net 2 ) And so whenever
the word is introduced Into the dialogue it is done in the
most humorous manner possible.
But, seldom as Shakespeare introduces the word in any
scene—as, e.g., The very rats instinctively• have left it,
or in the soliloquy of Belarius, "l'is wonder that an in-
visible instinct should frame them to royalty unlearn'd '—
it is clear that instinct was to his mind a very indefinite
stimulant to thought or action. The question of the sight
of bird a is not so difficult to decide as might be supposed.
The naturalist and the anatomist have settled it between
them long ago, and when they read some of the letters of
your correspondents, they wonder that the average amount
of information on the subject should be so small, For in-
stance, such a fact as this may induce some to hesitate
before beginning to talk about instinct. There is a species
of pigeon remarkable for its long flights, which has an eye
that is actually larger than our eyes and much larger than
its own brain. Imagine what we should be able to do if we
had eyes as big in proportion. It is only by some such rude
conception that we can form an idea, without special
knowledge, of the powers of the senses in animals. We
possess a good average endowment of sight, hearing,
ticc., but the dog's nose, the stag's ear, and the eagle's eye,
are as superior to our senses as our reasoning powers are
to theirs. Those who know best the habits of the lower
animals, and can thus explain what would otherwise be
unintelligible, do not feel disposed to argue with others
who have never learnt the simplest lessons of scientific
teaching.

[49

The first Cabinet Council of the year was held on
Tuesday. The whole of the Ministers were present, with
the exception of the Secretary of State for War.
In a lecture delivered in London, on Tuesdaynight,
by Mr. Thomas riughes, Q. C.:- to a working man's club, on
"Recreation," the learned gentleman, after an interesting
sketch of popular amusements from the time of the Greeks,
raised the question whether the time had not arrived for
superseding field sports in this country by such forms of
excitement as Alpine climbing, ericket, football, and rifle
shooting. ills objection to field sports was based on their
involving pain, death, and sometimes torture, and on their
annually consigning thousands of Englishmen to ,prison for
Infraction of the game' laws.