THE BUNTINGS 185 



have made him "a perfect example of a despot lord" I am quite 

 unable to see. Such active sympathy, even though not extending 

 to actual collaboration, could only have come from a good husband. 



No less than three of our buntings more than half of them 

 practically, that is to say have been accused of what is called 

 intelligent adaptation in nest-building; in other words, of having 

 revolutionary tendencies a grave charge, which I propose to investi- 

 gate. First, let us take the reed-bunting, he being amongst those 

 implicated. In a close bunch of wiry reeds, a nest of his was found by 

 Boraston : to be deeper and more closely compacted, than was another, 

 built amongst hedge-parsley, which does not grow so densely, and the 

 stalks of which are more pliant. But does not this merely mean that 

 the one kind of vegetation will support less weight than the other, 

 and that the bird feels when the safety-point has been reached? 

 If this is not the case, then where is the adaptation ? and if it is, it 

 seems much more a matter of sensation than reason. It is not so 

 much the latter that tells one when the ascent of a tree is becoming 

 unsafe. Again, " where a gap presented itself, at one point, between 

 the nearest stalk and the rim of the nest, the bird had extended the 

 rim by weaving grass-stems, in zig-zag fashion, so as to form a small 

 horizontal platform." 2 Because, as it seems to me, there was the 

 rim and there was the grass, and it was the bird's ancestral custom 

 to weave the one to the other. All stems cannot be equally near to 

 all rims, nor can all sites chosen be precisely alike, but unless there is 

 a very considerable difference in the conditions, or unless it be one of 

 kind, in each case involving some essential departure in the method of 

 architecture, it does not appear to me that the intelligence or extra- 

 intelligence implied is other than trifling. Indeed, it might show 

 more if, instead of weaving in a reed which, though farther from the 

 rim than usual, was close enough to bring its instinct into play, the bird 

 were to pass it altogether. It would then not have done something 

 which it felt an inherited impulse to do, because it was not neces- 



1 Birds by Land and Sea. * Boraston, op. tit. 



