How to Attract the Birds 



quires forty days, sometimes a fiili six weeks, to hatch. 

 As in all arbitrary divisions, it is not always possible 

 to draw a sharp dividing line. Between precocial 

 and altricial birds, innumerable gradations occur. 



Among the lower bird forms, polygamy being 

 common, there can be no home life, and it is for- 

 tunate these chicks are independent little creatures 

 from the first. Indeed, it was John Fiske who 

 contributed to science the fact that the advancement 

 ot all creatures — not of the human race alone — has 

 been measured by the prolongation of the period of 

 infancy. The longer the young are dependent on 

 both parents, the stronger the tie becomes between 

 mates, the more prolonged and beautiful the home 

 life with all its strengthening physical and moral in- 

 fluences making for the uplift of the species, until, 

 among civilized humans, home living becomes a life 

 habit, tar outlasting the presence of children beneath 

 the root. Let the so-called advanced woman, with 

 her unscientific notions of a readjustment of the 

 partition of labor between the sexes, remember that 

 the males among the ostrich tribe, most nearly re- 

 lated to the reptiles, take entire charge of the 

 young. Certain plover fathers, too, and phalaropes 

 attend to nursery duties, even to sitting on the eggs, 

 leaving their wives free to waste their strength on 

 clubs, pink teas, or whatever may be the equivalent 

 among *' advanced " feathered females. On the 

 other hand, the selfish, dandified drakes of some of 

 our wild ducks desert their mates as soon as the 

 first egg is laid, lest any domestic duties might 

 be demanded ot them; nor do they rejoin their 

 families until the ducklings are educated and fully 



80 



