INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE IN BIRDS 533 



Eimer is convinced that the little foundling of a cuckoo has so good a 

 memory of its foster-parents and of the nest in which it was reared, 

 that it is able to make a proper choice of both when it comes to lay its 

 eggs in after life, and further that the experiences of its early youth 

 have " at last become instinctive by inheritance." It can not build a 

 nest because it has never learned how, and if it never builds it can not 

 of course transmit the instinct of nidification. When its original pro- 

 genitors adopted their piratical methods, they did so with their eyes 

 open, for they acted from " reflection and with design." The male 

 cuckoos are dissolute vagabonds and the females as bad or worse, for 

 they wander about not so much to find nests to steal, as to appease 

 " their insatiable sexual desires." 



That some instincts, in both arthropods and vertebrates, have not 

 perceptibly changed from age to age is not to be doubted. As Sidney 

 Smith observed, the wonderful instincts of animals seem to have been 

 given them for the preservation of their species, and that without them 

 they would have long ago perished. He says : 



The bee that understands one particular kind of architecture so well, once 

 out of his own special line of business, that of making honey, is as stupid as a 

 pebble stone, and with all his talents only exists that we may eat his labours, 

 while poets sing of them; or he constructs his boasted edifice for an egg of 

 which he knows neither the meaning nor the object, to produce a grub of which 

 he can form no possible conception; whereas man knows the beauty of every 

 brick he lays, or tower that he builds. The bee now builds just as he built in 

 the days of Homer; the bear is just as ignorant of good manners as he was two 

 thousand years ago, or ages ago; the baboon still as unable to read and write 

 as persons of honour or quality were in the days of Queen Elizabeth; but there 

 is no progress among the three B's, whereas now among all classes of men those 

 who can read and write are to be counted by the millions. 



We might add that the European cuckoo seems to have been no less 

 adept in stealing nests in the time of Aristotle than it is at this day, 

 and that even among the most rational, adaptable, and most plastic of 

 living beings, in his humblest estate, progress has been but little greater. 



II 



In some of the fishes, in reptiles, and more particularly in the birds, 

 we can discern the early if often halting steps of that intelligence which 

 in the highest of the primates was destined to turn the world upside 

 down. We can not attempt to specify with any detail the structure of 

 the avian brain, nor would it be of any use to do so, unless we could 

 award the proper functions to its several parts. While this can not 

 now be done, psychology has already learned some valuable lessons from 

 anatomy, at the hands of such a master as Edinger, and is destined to 

 learn many more. Without doubt, in the future, knowledge of the 

 brain of the fish, of the reptile and of the bird will serve as primers for 

 the understanding of the cerebral cortex. 



