v THE PHILOSOPHY OF BIRDS' NESTS 113 



to make it into a kind of felt. The birds pressed it with 

 their bodies, turning round upon them in every direction, so 

 as to get it quite firm and smooth before raising the sides. 

 These were added bit by bit, trimmed and beaten with the 

 wings and feet, so as to felt the whole together, projecting 

 fibres being now and then worked in with the bill. By these 

 simple and apparently inefficient means, the inner surface of 

 the nest was rendered almost as smooth and compact as a 

 piece of cloth. 



Man's Works mainly Imitative 



But look at civilised man ! it is said ; look at Grecian, and 

 Egyptian, and Koman, and Gothic, and modern architecture ! 

 What advance ! what improvement ! what refinements ! This 

 is what reason leads to, whereas birds remain for ever 

 stationary. If, however, such advances as these are required 

 to prove the effects of reason as contrasted with instinct, then 

 all savage and many half-civilised tribes have no reason, but 

 build instinctively quite as much as birds do. 



Man ranges over the whole earth, and exists under the 

 most varied conditions, leading necessarily to equally varied 

 habits. He migrates he makes wars and conquests one 

 race mingles with another different customs are brought 

 into contact the habits of a migrating or conquering race, 

 are modified by the different circumstances of a new country. 

 The civilised race which conquered Egypt must have de- 

 veloped its mode of building in a forest country where timber 

 was abundant, for it is not probable that the idea of cylin- 

 drical columns originated in a country destitute of trees. The 

 pyramids might have been built by an indigenous race, but 

 not the temples of Luxor and Karnak. In Grecian archi- 

 tecture almost every characteristic feature can be traced to an 

 origin in wooden buildings. The columns, the architrave, the 

 frieze, the fillets, the cantilevers, the form of the roof, all 

 point to an origin in some southern forest-clad country, and 

 strikingly corroborate the view derived from philology, that 

 Greece was colonised from north-western India. But to erect 

 columns and span them with huge blocks of stone, or marble, 

 is not an act of reason, but one of pure unreasoning imita- 

 tion. The arch is the only true and reasonable mode of 

 covering over wide spaces with stone, and, therefore, Grecian 

 I 



