In his _Manual of Psychology_ Dr Stout reminds us that “Human language is especially constructed to describe the mental states of human beings, and this means that it is especially constructed so as to mislead us when we attempt to describe the working of minds that differ in a great degree from the human.”

The use of the word “territory” in connection with the sexual life of birds is open to the danger which we are here asked to guard against, and I propose, therefore, before attempting to establish the theory on general grounds, to give some explanation of what the word is intended to represent and some account of the exact position that representation is supposed to occupy in the drama of bird life.

The word is capable of much expansion. There cannot be territories without boundaries of some description; there cannot well be boundaries without disputes arising as to those boundaries; nor, one would imagine, can there be disputes without consciousness as a factor entering into the situation; and so on, until by a simple mental process we conceive of a state in bird life analogous to that which we know to be customary amongst ourselves. Now, although the term “breeding territory,” when applied to the sexual life of birds, is not altogether a happy one, it is difficult to know how otherwise to give expression to the facts observed. Let it then be clearly understood that the expression “securing a territory” is used to denote a process, or rather part of a process, which, in order to insure success to the individual in the attainment of reproduction, has been gradually evolved to meet the exigencies of diverse circumstances. Regarded thus, we avoid the risk of conceiving of the act of securing a territory as a detached event in the life of a bird, and avoid, I hope, the risk of a conception based upon the meaning of the word when used to describe human as opposed to animal procedure.