174 THE HOME OF A BIRD 



and watched for ; and because it is such, it retains 

 a perennial charm. Still, in so far as we would 

 penetrate at all this outer coating, as it were, of 

 often inexplicable actions, we must needs employ 

 human standards, for the simple reason that we have 

 no other. The whole of the strange workings of 

 those lower or, perhaps better, of those "other" 

 minds ; the whole scheme of their morality for 

 they, too, have their rules of conduct we shall in 

 all probability never know ; but so far as we can 

 come to know them at all, we can do so only by 

 comparison with human reasons and human motives. 

 The same principle of life is in us and in them, 

 uttering itself in different ways. It would be strange 

 indeed if, having this common origin, our subsequent 

 development were such as to render us entirely 

 unintelligible one to another. 



Some such preface seemed called for by the 

 subject suggested by my title ; otherwise it might 

 be urged that, in writing of the homes of birds, 

 I was using words that, as applied to human 

 beings, were full of meaning, but, as applied to 

 birds, had none. Home with us is that place where 

 we were born ; where we have lived with those who 

 made it such ; where that portion of our race dwells 

 that we call our countrymen ; the place, every feature 

 of which is familiar, as we say, extending to things 

 outside the home the name of that which is the 

 reason and foundation of it the family. If we 

 wander from it, we shall come to it again ; if we 

 wander often, and far, and in peril, we shall return 

 to it with greater eagerness and constancy. To man, 

 with his memory of things past and hope of things 



