v THE PHILOSOPHY OF BIRDS' NESTS 101 



ancient inhabitants of the hottest regions, and are par- 

 ticularly addicted to forming their first settlements at the 

 mouths of rivers or creeks, or in land-locked bays and inlets. 

 They are a pre-eminently maritime or semi-aquatic people, 

 to whom a canoe is a necessary of life, and who will never 

 travel by land if they can do so by water. In accordance 

 with these tastes, they have built their houses on posts in 

 the water, after the manner of the lake-dwellers of ancient 

 Europe ; and this mode of construction has become so con- 

 firmed, that even those tribes which have spread far into the 

 interior, on dry plains and rocky mountains, continue to build 

 in exactly the same manner, and find safety in the height to 

 which they elevate their dwellings above the ground. 



Why does each Bird build a peculiar kind of Nest ? 



These general characteristics of the abode of savage man 

 will be found to be exactly paralleled by the nests of birds. 

 Each species uses the materials it can most readily obtain, 

 and builds in situations most congenial to its habits. The 

 wren, for example, frequenting hedgerows and low thickets, 

 builds its nest generally of moss, a material always found 

 where it lives, and among which it probably obtains much of 

 its insect food ; but it varies sometimes, using hay or feathers 

 when these are at hand. Eooks dig in pastures and ploughed 

 fields for grubs, and in doing so must continually encounter 

 roots and fibres. These are used to line its nest. What more 

 natural ! The crow feeding on carrion, dead rabbits, and 

 lambs, and frequenting sheep-walks and warrens, chooses fur 

 and wool to line its nest. The lark frequents cultivated 

 fields, and makes its nest, on the ground, of dry grass-stems 

 lined with finer grass and rootlets materials the most easy 

 to meet with, and the best adapted to its needs. The king- 

 fisher makes its nest of the bones of the fish which it has 

 eaten. Swallows use clay and mud from the margins of the 

 ponds and rivers over which they find their insect food. The 

 materials of birds' nests, like those used by savage man for 

 his house, are, then, those which come first to hand ; and it 

 certainly requires no more special instinct to select them in 

 one case than in the other. 



But, it will be said, it is not so much the materials as the 



