358 OUR RARER BIRDS 



has to a large extent replaced the lower faculties ; for the 

 more Eeason is developed, the less are the other powers em- 

 ployed. To credit birds with such a marvellous power as 

 blind and infallible Instinct in building their complex nests, 

 is to endow them with intelligence far greater than anything 

 possessed by Man, and to allot them a faculty which is 

 superhuman ! The evidence that we are able to collect all 

 tends to disprove this mysterious power. Birds brought up 

 in confinement do not make a nest typical of their species, 

 and in most cases content themselves wath forminc^ the merest 

 rudiments of a nest, merely heaping a lot of material together, 

 without design, on which they lay their eggs ; and in some 

 cases even this slight provision is dispensed with. This may 

 be the result of Instinct or Hereditary Habit — the blind 

 impulse to make a nest ; but without tuition, or some design 

 to copy, it is wofully at fault. By the way, a most remarkable 

 and convincing proof of this has been recorded by me in 

 Nature (1885, p. 533), of a pair of young Chaffinches, which 

 had been turned out in New Zealand, making a most 

 abnormal nest, a drawing of which and further critical re- 

 marks on the subject may be seen in the Leisure Hour (1888, 

 pp. 344, 633). The same remarks apply to Man; for with 

 all his boasted Eeason he is equally as incapable of building 

 a habitation peculiar to his race, if he has not seen one, or 

 been initiated in the secrets of its construction. Savage man 

 neither alters nor improves any more than the birds; and each 

 of his great races has a peculiar style of architecture. The 

 Arab and the American Indian dw^ell in tents, the negro 

 builds a hut, the Bushman lives in caves, the Malay builds a 

 house on poles, like the very Eeed Warbler in the reeds. 

 Now transfer an infant of any one of these savage races, say 

 to civilised Europe, and is it conceivable that when grown up 

 to manhood he would set to work to build a tent, a hut, or a 

 house on posts, according to the style adopted by his race, 



