162 FRANCIS H. HERRICK 



lished in 1867, and "A Theory of Birds' Nests," which appeared 

 in the following year, by Alfred Russell Wallace; both have 

 since been printed in revised form, and presumably still appeal 

 to a diminishing number of writers. These interesting essays 

 have received ample criticism of various sorts, and although it 

 is not likely that students of animal behavior at the present 

 time could accept much of the philosophy which they offer, 

 this should not alter the high and just esteem in which their 

 venerable author is universally held. Wallace was tempted to 

 leave the solid ground of instinct for the pitfalls of analogy, and 

 to fill the gaps in observed facts by unwarranted inference : 

 Man builds by memory and imitation; why not also the birds? 

 He contended that in nest-building instinct had been assumed 

 not alone for birds but for the social insects as well, and that 

 for the former it could be proved only by showing that the 

 young of a wild bird, when artificially reared would inevitably 

 reproduce its own specific type of nest, without tuition of any 

 sort. In his opinion the few cases in which this crucial test had 

 then been applied failed to sux:»port the prevailing theory of 

 instinct. While we do not consider that the few^ experiments 

 which have since been recorded uphold any other theory than 

 that of instinct, it is to be noted that the long confinement 

 under artificial conditions, commonly required in such tests, 

 is almost certain to disturb, if not to profoundly modify the 

 reproductive activities. 



Wallace's odd notion that the nestling was more eager to 

 learn than the " whining schoolboy creeping like snail " to 

 the "nest" of knowledge, is thus naively expressed: "But 

 surely the young birds before they left the nest had ample oppor- 

 tunities of observing its foriu, its size, its position, the materials 

 of which it was constructed, and the manner in which these 

 materials were arranged. Memory would retain these observa- 

 tions until the following spring, when the materials would come 

 in their way during their daily 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 are laid and 

 the materials put together." His earlier idea that young birds 

 made mental notes of the nest in which they were reared in 

 order to be able to reproduce one on the same model later in 



