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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

gone before us? We have not even been able to discover or develope any definite style of building best suited for us. We have no characteristic national style of architecture, and to that extent are even below the birds, who have each their characteristic form of nest, exactly adapted to their wants and habits.

Birds do Alter and Improve their Nests when altered Conditions require it.

The great uniformity in the architecture of each species of bird which has been supposed to prove a nest-building instinct, we may, therefore, fairly impute to the uniformity of the conditions under which each species lives. Their range is often very limited, and they very seldom permanently change their country, so as to be placed in new conditions. When, however, new conditions do occur, they take advantage of them just as freely and wisely as man could do. The chimney and house-swallows are a standing proof of a change of habit since chimneys and houses were built, and in America this change has taker place within about three hundred years. Thread and worsted are now used in many nests instead of wool and horsehair, and the jackdaw shows an affection for the church steeple which can hardly be explained by instinct. In the more thickly populated parts of the United States, the Baltimore oriole uses all sorts of pieces of string, skeins of silk, or the gardener's bass, to weave into its fine pensile nest,

instead of the single hairs and vegetable fibres it has painfully to seek in wilder regions; and Wilson, a most careful observer, believes that it improves in nest-building by practice-the older birds making the best nests. The purple martin takes possession of empty gourds or small boxes, stuck up for its reception in almost every village and farm in America ; and several of the American wrens will also build in cigar boxes, with a small hole cut in them, if placed in a suitable situation. The orchard oriole of the United States offers us an excellent example of a bird which modifies its nest according to circumstances. When built among firm and stiff branches the nest is very shallow, but if, as is often the case, it is suspended from the slender twigs of the weeping willow, it is made much deeper, so that when swayed about violently by the wind the young may not tumble out. It has been observed also, that the nests built in the warm Southern States are much slighter and more porous in texture than those in the colder regions of the north. Our own house-sparrow equally well adapts himself to circumstances. When he builds in trees, as he, no doubt, always did originally, he constructs a well-made domed nest, perfectly fitted to protect his young ones; but when he can find a convenient hole in a building or among thatch, or in any well-sheltered place, he takes much less trouble, and forms a very loosely-built nest.

A curious example of a recent change of habits has occurred in Jamaica. Previous to 1854, the palm

swift (Tachornis phænicobea) inhabited exclusively the palm trees in a few districts in the island. A colony then established themselves in two cocoa-nut palms in Spanish Town, and remained there till 1857, when one tree was blown down, and the other stripped of its foliage. Instead of now seeking out other palm trees, the swifts drove out the swallows who built in the Piazza of the House of Assembly, and took possession of it, building their nests on the tops of the end walls and at the angles formed by the beams and joists, a place which they continue to occupy in considerable numbers. It is remarked that here they form their nest with much less elaboration than when built in the palms, probably from being less exposed.

A still more curious example of change and improvement in nest building was published by Mr. F. A. Pouchet, in the tenth number of the Comptes Rendus for 1870, just as the first edition of this work appeared. Forty years ago M. Pouchet had himself collected nests of the House-Martin or WindowSwallow (Hirundo urbica) from old buildings at Rouen, and deposited them in the museum of that city. On recently obtaining some more nests he was surprised, on comparing them with the old ones, to find that they exhibited a decided change of form and structure. This led him to investigate the matter more closely. The changed nests had been obtained from houses in a newly erected quarter of the city, and he found that all the nests in the newly-built streets were of the new form. But on visiting the churches and older

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