CAVE DWELLINGS— FEWKES. 615 



As one of the few crafts man shares with animals is the building 

 habit, it is natural for us, on the very threshold of the subject, to 

 consider the influence of environment on lower intelligences as 

 expressed by insects, birds, mammals; or perhaps it might be better 

 to say the study of the habitations of lower animals should go 

 hand in hand with those of natural man/ We are immediately 

 informed that the bird acts not from reason but from inherited 

 habit or instinct. The first swallows which built under the eaves 

 of a house or in a chimney of the same surely had no inherited 

 instinct to guide them. This choice was certainly not due to former 

 teaching in the site that has been inherited, but to an independent 

 use of mind which recognized the advantage of a new environ- 

 mental condition. It does not seem unreasonable to suppose that 

 the birds that first built their nests under overhanging cliffs did 

 so for the same reason that men built in similar places. Both bird 

 and man saw that the caves were advantageous for shelter and built 

 accordingly. 



The cave swallow builds its nest of available material, as stones, 

 clay, and twigs. I possess a photograph showing one of these animal 

 cliff dwellings which indicates how close a parallelism can be traced 

 in the choice of a site and material for a building by animals and man 

 as determined by their environment — a most fascinating subject to 

 which I can give only brief mention at this time. The outcome of 

 the comparison is that there appears to be a general psychic law show- 

 ing identity of thought among animals and men in the construction 

 of buildings or nests where available material and geographical con- 

 ditions are the same. 



Life in caves passes naturally into one in permanent houses of 

 stone or cla.y. If we follow Ratsel in his conclusion that '' the germ 

 of stone architecture " arose from " the habit of dwelling in caves 

 widely spread in primitive times and not yet obsolete," then the 

 geographical distribution of caves has largely determined the sites 

 of monument development and consequently of civilization. The 

 effect of stone buildings made by one generation on development 

 of the culture in the next and subsequent generations is very con- 

 siderable, and the perpetual existence of monuments is a continual 



1 This great " untilled field of comparative psychology," as pointed out by a re- 

 viewer in The Atheneum (Aug. 20, 1910), of Dr. H. C. McCoolc's Ant Communities 

 and how they are Governed, " will be extended from the primitive human type to the 

 conceptions of other animals, but zoologists must find the materials." Although 

 somewhat foreign to my subject the following comment by Dr. Cook on the discovery 

 of a story in an ant's nest 8 feet deep is instructive : 



" Those who are curious in such comparisons might find grounds here for a striking 

 parallel between the achievement of an ant three-eights of an inch high (long) and of 

 a man 170 times as high (5 J feet). Were we to reckon on a proportionate rate of 

 progress between the two on the basis of height, our man would have to be credited 

 with a storied structure 1,408 feet deep." 



