BIRDS' NESTS AND EGGS 357 



examples of true instinct, analogous to a baby sucking its 

 mother's breast — actions performed without instruction, 

 experience, or previously acquired knowledge. In the same 

 manner a bird's impulse to build a nest is instinctive ; but the 

 means it adopts to carry out such an impulse are controlled 

 by similar mental faculties to those possessed by man. As 

 soon as we look upon Life as universally the same — in beast 

 as in man — then we begin to arrive at right conclusions 

 concerning Nature's wonderful facts. Man has held himself 

 above his more lowly relations too long — he is after all only 

 the highest development of Life ; his pedigree is unbroken ; 

 and the lower animals are governed by impulses the same as 

 his own in kind, different only in their degrees of mental 

 development. Once admit this, and we have no difficulty in 

 explaining the nest-building capabilities of birds. 



The question naturally arises. How do birds build their 

 nest, and especially i\\Q\Y first nest — is it by blind Instinct or 

 by other mental faculties? To credit the bird with such 

 instinct, which, because it seems so self-evident, is taken to be 

 matter-of-fact, is to admit that it possesses intellectual powers 

 infinitely superior to those of man ; whilst the evidence that 

 can be gathered on the subject all goes to show that its in- 

 tellectual powers are of precisely the same kind as man's ; but 

 some of them, of course, are infinitely inferior in degree, 

 whilst others are unquestionably superior. Eeason in birds 

 can only be regarded as somewhat rudimentary, though there is 

 undoubted evidence of its existence. The faculties a bird brings 

 into play in building its nest are probably these : — Imitation 

 plays the greatest part, and the next important faculty of the 

 mind is Memory, both of which are distinct from what is 

 popularly called Eeason, which together with Hereditary 

 Habit play the minor parts. All these powers are found in 

 Man, but, with the exception of Eeason, in a much less 

 pronounced degree, especially in civilised man, in whom it 



