234 A THEORY OF BIRDS' NESTS. 



ing them in the finished structure, or in the form or 

 position of that structure. 



During all these changes, however, certain speciali- 

 ties of nest-building would continue, for a shorter or 

 a longer time after the causes which had necessitated 

 them had passed away. Such records of a vanished 

 past meet us everywhere, even in man's works, not- 

 withstanding his boasted reason. Not only are the 

 main features of Greek architecture, mere reproduc- 

 tions in stone of what were originally parts of a 

 wooden building, but our modern copyists of Gothic 

 architecture often build solid buttresses capped with 

 weighty pinnacles, to support a wooden roof which has 

 no outward thrust to render them necessary ; and even 

 think they ornament their buildings by adding sham 

 spouts of carved stone, while modern waterpipes, stuck 

 on without any attempt at harmony, do the real duty. 

 So, when railways superseded coaches, it was thought 

 necessary to build the first-class carriages to imitate 

 a number of coach-bodies joined together ; and the 

 arm-loops for each passenger to hold on by, which 

 were useful when bad roads made every journey a suc- 

 cession of jolts and lurches, were continued on our 

 smooth macadamised mail-routes, and, still more ab- 

 surdly, remain to this day in our railway carriages, 

 the relic of a kind of locomotion we can now hardly 

 realize. Another good example is to be seen in our 

 boots. When elastic sides came into fashion we had 

 been so long used to fasten them with buttons or laces, 

 that a boot without either looked bare and unfinished, 



