336 THE STRUCTURE AND LIFE OF BIRDS CHAP. 



be inborn, only requiring to be awakened, or, as 

 Professor Morgan says, requiring " only the touch of 

 the trigger to fire off the complicated train of activities, 

 the ability to perform which is innate." The Razor- 

 bill affords a good illustration ; he is a born diver, and 

 yet cries plaintively when his mother coaxes him to 

 take the first plunge. The principle will become clear 

 if we imagine an attempt to teach a bird to build 

 anything but its own particular nest, to imitate the 

 Bower Bird, for instance, and construct an elaborate 

 arbour, or an attempt to teach the Chaffinch to build a 

 domed nest like the Long-tailed Tit's, or a House- 

 Sparrow or a Wood-pigeon to build a neat nest of any 

 kind. If it were ever successful it would at any rate 

 require much time, whereas just a hint, if even that 

 is required, is enough to set a bird off building as its 

 parents have built before it. Any one who has taught 

 boys must have noticed what is not very dissimilar. 

 A boy — some vara avis — will perhaps master Euclid as 

 if geometry were born in him. In classics much 

 teaching, and much work on his part may produce 

 very little result. In short, all faculties are innate, 

 and, supposing them to exist, the only question is, 

 whether it requires any teaching or practice, and if 

 so, how much, to awaken them. 



Birds have, compared with man, very few and very 

 limited powers, and they differ from us, besides, in this, 

 that it requires comparatively very little stimulus to 

 bring their faculties into full working order. A few 

 suggestions from an older bird on a particular subject, 

 and a younger one at once advances the greater part 

 of the way towards the furthest point to which his 



