NERVOUS PARENTS i8i 



proportions, according to the species. No one who 

 has seen both a snipe and a wild duck ** feign," as it 

 is commonly called, being disabled, can have helped 

 noticing that far more of intelligence seems to enter 

 into the performance of the latter bird, than into 

 that of the former. The moor-hen is not a bird 

 that is known in connection with any special ruse 

 or device for enticing intruders from its young, but 

 I have seen one fall into a sort of convulsion, on the 

 water, upon my appearing, very suddenly, on the bank 

 of a little stream where she was swimming, with her 

 young brood. The actions of a snipe, startled from 

 its eggs, were much more extraordinary, and equally, 

 as it seemed to me, of a purely nervous character.^ 

 Here, surely, we must have the raw material for that 

 remarkable instinct, so highly developed in some 

 birds, by which they attract attention from their 

 young, towards themselves. But, if so, this instinct 

 is not lapsed intelligence, but, rather, hysteria become 

 half-intelligent. The part which mere muscular- 

 nervous movements may have played, under the 

 agency of natural selection, in the formation of some 

 instincts, has not, I think, been sufficiently consi- 

 dered. 



There is another class of facts which, I think, 

 may be explained on the above view of the origin 

 of the nest - building instinct. Some birds pair, 

 habitually, on the nest, whilst a few make runs, or 

 bowers, for the express purpose, apparently, of court- 

 ing, and where pairing, not improbably, may also 

 take place. Now, if the ancient nest had been, 

 before everything, the place of sexual intercourse, 

 1 "Bird Watching," pp. 60, 61. 



