search for food, and it seems highly probable that the older birds would begin building first, and that those born the preceding summer would follow their example, learning from them how the foundations of the nest are laid and the materials put together.*

Again, we have no right to assume that young birds generally pair together. It seems probable that in each pair there is most frequently only one bird born the preceding summer, who would be guided, to some extent, by its partner.

My friend, Mr. Richard Spruce, the well-known traveller and botanist, thinks this is the case, and has kindly allowed me to publish the following observations, which he sent me after reading my book.

How young Birds may learn to build Nests.

"Among the Indians of Peru and Ecuador, many of whose customs are relics of the semi-civilisation that prevailed before the Spanish conquest, it is usual for the young men to marry old women, and the young women old men. A young man, they say, accustomed to be tended by his mother, would fare ill if

* It has been very pertinently remarked by a friend, that, if young birds did observe the nest they were reared in, they would consider it to be a natural production like the leaves and branches and matted twigs that surrounded it, and could not possibly conclude that their parents had constructed the one and not the other. This may be a valid objection, and, if so, we shall have to depend on the mode of instruction described in the succeeding paragraphs, but the question can only be finally decided by a careful set of experiments.

he had only an ignorant young girl to take care of him; and the girl herself would be better off with a man of mature years, capable of supplying the place of a father to her.

"Something like this custom prevails among many animals. A stout old buck can generally fight his way to the doe of his choice, and indeed of as many does as he can manage; but a young buck of his first horns,' must either content himself with celibacy, or with some dame well-stricken in years.

"Compare the nearly parallel case of the domestic cock and of many other birds. Then consider the consequences amongst birds that pair, if an old cock sorts with a young hen and an old hen with a young cock, as I think is certainly the case with blackbirds and others that are known to fight for the youngest and handsomest females. One of each pair being already an old bird,' will be competent to instruct its younger partner (not only in the futility of chaff,' but) in the selection of a site for a nest and how to build it; then, how eggs are hatched and young birds reared.

"Such, in brief, is my idea of how a bird on its first espousals may be taught the Whole Duty of the married state."

On this difficult point I have sought for information from some of our best field ornithologists, but without success, as it is in most cases impossible to distinguish old from young birds after the first year. I am informed, however, that the males of blackbirds,

sparrows, and many other kinds fight furiously, and the conqueror of course has the choice of a mate. Mr. Spruce's view is at least as probable as the contrary one (that young birds, as a rule, pair together), and it is to some extent supported by the celebrated American observer, Wilson, who strongly insists on the variety in the nests of birds of the same species, some being so much better finished than others; and he believes that the less perfect nests are built by the younger, the more perfect by the older, birds.

At all events, till the crucial experiment is made, and a pair of birds raised from the egg without ever seeing a nest are shown to be capable of making one exactly of the parental type, I do not think we are justified in calling in the aid of an unknown and mysterious faculty to do that which is so strictly analogous to the house-building of savage man.

Again, we always assume that because a nest appears to us delicately and artfully built, that it therefore requires much special knowledge and acquired skill (or their substitute, instinct) in the bird who builds it. We forget that it is formed twig by twig and fibre by fibre, rudely enough at first, but crevices and irregularities, which must seem huge gaps and chasms in the eyes of the little builders, are filled up by twigs and stalks pushed in by slender beak and active foot, and that the wool, feathers, or horsehair are laid thread by thread, so that the result seems a marvel of ingenuity to us, just as would the rudest Iinand hut to a native of Brobdignag.

Levaillant has given an account of the process of nest-building by a little African warbler, which sufficiently shows that a very beautiful structure may be produced with very little art. The foundation was laid of moss and flax interwoven with grass and tufts of cotton, and presented a rude mass, five or six inches in diameter, and four inches thick. This was pressed and trampled down repeatedly, so as at last to make it into a kind of felt. The birds pressed it with their bodies, turning round upon them in every direction, so as to get it quite firm and smooth before raising the sides. These were added bit by bit, trimmed and beaten with the wings and feet, so as to felt the whole together, projecting fibres being now and then worked in with the bill. By these simple and apparently inefficient means, the inner surface of the nest was rendered almost as smooth and compact as a piece of cloth.

Man's Works mainly Imitative.

But look at civilised man! it is said; look at Grecian, and Egyptian, and Roman, and Gothic, and modern Architecture! What advance! what improvement ! what refinements! This is what reason leads to, whereas birds remain for ever stationary. If, however, such advances as these are required, to prove the effects of reason as contrasted with instinct, then all savage and many half-civilized tribes have no reason, but build instinctively quite as much as birds

do.

Man ranges over the whole earth, and exists under the most varied conditions, leading necessarily to equally varied habits. He migrates-he makes wars and conquests-one race mingles with another-different customs are brought into contact-the habits of a migrating or conquering race are modified by the different circumstances of a new country. The civilized race which conquered Egypt must have developed its mode of building in a forest country where timber was abundant, for it is not probable, that the idea of cylindrical columns originated in a country destitute of trees. The pyramids might have been built by an indigenous race, but not the temples of El Uksor and Karnak. In Grecian architecture, almost every characteristic feature can be traced to an origin in wooden buildings. The columns, the architrave, the frieze, the fillets, the cantelevers, the form of the roof, all point to an origin in some southern forest-clad country, and strikingly corroborate the view derived from philology, that Greece was colonised from north-western India. But to erect columns and span them with huge blocks of stone, or marble, is not an act of reason, but one of pure unreasoning imitation. The arch is the only true and reasonable mode of covering over wide spaces with stone, and therefore, Grecian architecture, however exquisitely beautiful, is false in principle, and is by no means a good example of the application of reason to the art of building. And what do most of us do at the present day but imitate the buildings of those that have