T70 BIRD LIFE GLIMPSES 



would then have been laid in a nest, but such 

 nest would not have been made with any idea of 

 receiving the eggs, or sheltering the young. Its 

 existence would have been due to excited and 

 non-purposive movements, springing out of the 

 violence of the sexual emotions. Now, however, 

 comes a further stage, which, it might well be 

 thought, could only have grown out of deliberate 

 and intelligent action — I mean at every slight step 

 in the process — on the part of the bird. I allude 

 to the lining of grass, moss, sticks, or even stones 

 or fragments of shells, with which many birds 

 that lay their eggs in a hollow, made by them 

 in the ground, further improve this. That the 

 nature and object of this process is now, through 

 memory, more or less understood by many birds, 

 I, for one, do not doubt ; but, as every evolutionist 

 will admit, it is the beginnings of anything, which 

 best explain, and are most fraught with significance. 

 Is it possible that even the actual building of the 

 nest may have had a nervous — a frenzied — origin ? 

 Lions and other fierce carnivorous animals will, when 

 wounded, bite at sticks, or anything else lying within 

 their reach. That a bird, as accustomed to peck as 

 a dog or a lion is to bite, should, whilst in a state of 

 the most intense nervous excitement, do the same, 

 does not appear to me to be more strange, or, in- 

 deed, in any way peculiar ; and that such a trick 

 would be inherited, and, if beneficial, increased and 

 modified, who that has Darwin in his soul can 

 doubt ? Now if a bird, whilst ecstatically rolling 

 on the ground, were to pick up and throw aside 

 either small sticks or any other loose-lying and 



