202 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 



which plainly haunted him he would have been saved 

 from having to refer instinct to imitation, in the face 

 of the fact that in a thousand instances the creature 

 imitating can never have seen its model, save when it 

 was a part of its parents, seeing what they saw, 

 doing what they did, feeling as they felt, and remem- 

 bering what they remembered. 



Miss Seward tells us that Dr. Darwin read his 

 chapter on instinct " to a lady who was in the habit of 

 rearing canary birds. She observed that the pair 

 which he then saw building their nest in her cage, 

 were a male and female, who had been hatched and 

 reared in that very cage, and were not in existence when 

 the mossy cradle was fabricated in which they first saw 

 light." She asked him, and quite reasonably, " how, 

 upon his principle of imitation, he could account for 

 the nest he then saw building, being constructed even 

 to the precise disposal of every hair and shred of wool 

 upon the model of that in which the pair were born, 

 and on which every other canary bird's nest is con- 

 structed, when the proper materials are furnished. 

 That of the pyefinch," she added, " is of much compacter 

 form, warmer, and more comfortable. Pull one of these 

 nests to pieces for its materials ; and place another 

 nest before these canary birds as a pattern, and see if 

 they will make the slightest attempt to imitate their 

 model ! No, the result of their labour will, upon 

 instinctive hereditary impulse, be exactly the slovenly 

 little mansion of their race, the same with that which 

 their parents built before themselves were hatched. 

 The Doctor could not do away the force of that single 



