THE BUNTINGS 187 



and, since there is generally more than one nest in a season, memory 

 might serve it so far. In all such cases, however, the mechanism 

 would have preceded the idea of that use to which it had been 

 afterwards applied. This is precisely my idea of the way in which 

 change in established methods comes about, and new instincts gradu- 

 ally arise. Small deviations take place, into which purpose hardly 

 enters due, in some instances, to mere nervous-muscular move- 

 ments but which a quite slight intelligence, finding the thing under 

 its nose, may afterwards utilise, from which point there is another 

 advance of the same kind, and so on, never-endingly, the whole being 

 shaped by the principle of natural selection, which uses whatever is 

 fit to be used. It is thus, as I believe, that the nest of the ostrich 

 (such as it is) has been evolved. From the frenzied sexual rolling 

 in the sand has come the depression, and the nervous pecking up of 

 the sand in her bill, and letting it drop again, by the hen, as she sits 

 there, produces, as can be seen, the mound or embankment around 

 it. This was the beginning ; use, then, began to demand the hollow, 

 and intelligence probably first stepped in when this was added to by 

 a few kicks with the feet, in the delivery of which, however, the 

 courting attitude was, and still is, assumed. 1 



The nearness of the relationship between the yellow-hammer and 

 cirl-bunting is marked not only by the similarity of their nests, but 

 also, as might perhaps be expected to follow, by that of the nesting- 

 site. S. G. Gumming, however, has drawn a distinction between 

 the two species, in this respect, He says : " The yellow-hammer, in 

 nine cases out of ten, builds its nest actually touching the ground, 

 whether it be placed in herbage, on a flat surface, or in a bank or 

 hedge. The cirl-bunting, on the contrary, invariably builds some 

 distance off the ground, the height varying from a few inches to 



1 See an interesting paper by Mr. Cronwright Schreiner in the Zoologist for 1897, pp. 97-120. 

 It corrected various fallacies, in regard to the habits of the ostrich, which have for long been, 

 and, I believe, still are ignorantly promulgated from the learned arm-chair. [It is only fair 

 to add, however, that the "learned arm-chairs" were simply relying upon the informa- 

 tion supplied them by the "man on the spot." The error committed by the former was to 

 assume the accuracy of the latter, who must, therefore, share the blame. ED.] 



