104 THE ARCHITECTURE OF BIRDS. 



shipping is 30,000 tuns. In the Archipelago, at the 

 prices already quoted, this propertyis worth 1,263,519 

 Spanish dollars, or 284,290/. The value of this 

 immense property to the country which produces it, 

 rests upon the capricious wants of a single people. 

 The value of the labour expended in bringing birds' 

 nests to market is but a trifling portion of their price, 

 which consists of the highest price which the luxu- 

 rious Chinese will afford to pay for them, and which 

 is a tax paid by that nation to the inhabitants of the 

 Indian islands. There is, perhaps, no production 

 upon which human industry is exerted, of which the 

 cost of production bears so small a proportion to the 

 market price."* 



ALTHOUGH we have considered birds as miners, as 

 ground-builders, as masons, as carpenters, as plat- 

 form-builders, as basket-makers, as weavers, as tai- 

 lors, as felt-makers, and as cementers, we have not 

 dwelt at much length upon any fancied analogies 

 between their arts and those of the human race. 

 The great distinction between man and the inferior 

 animals is that the one learns almost every art pro- 

 gressively, by his own experience operating with the 

 accumulated knowledge of past generations, while 

 the others work by a fixed rule, improving very 

 little, if any, during the course of their own lives, 

 and rarely deviating to-day from the plans pursued 

 by the same species a thousand years ago. It is 

 true that the swallow, which doubtless once built its 

 nest in hollow trees, has now accommodated itself 

 to the progress of human society by choosing chim- 

 neys for nestling ; and it is also to be noticed that, 

 in the selection of materials, a great many birds, as 

 we have already shown, accommodate themselves 

 * Crawford's Indian Archipelago, vol. iii. 



