7O INSTINCT AND REASON. 



were afterwards found dead or dying on the scene of 

 action 1 . The shape of the creature, and the combina- 

 tion for warlike purposes, which carries with it such a 

 tinge of humanity/ can scarcely fail to affect the ima- 

 gination. Yet these isolated instances must be far less 

 telling than the comparison which Mr. Wallace has so 

 ingeniously instituted between man as a builder and 

 birds in the same capacity. The shelter of the savage 

 is in many cases a less finished contrivance than the 

 nest which the bird prepares for its young. The 

 featherless biped, like the feathered one, takes the 

 materials readiest to its digits. Generations upon ge- 

 nerations follow one another without improvement or 

 signs of inventive skill. Even in the days of enlight- 

 enment, and in nations which pride themselves most 

 upon it, the human nest is repeatedly constructed with- 

 out the smallest attention to comfort, health, or beauty. 

 Men, whose fathers before them have built long rows 

 of red-brick boxes to live in, build, by instinct if you 

 will, for it can scarcely be by reason, more lengthening 

 chains of red-brick boxes. There is no reason, indeed, 

 for supposing that the bird consults any principle of 

 beauty in the construction of its nest, but a principle of 

 expedience some birds certainly do consult ; the orchard 

 oriole, for example, building its nest shallow or deep, 

 according as it is placed among firm and stiff branches, 

 or suspended from the slender wind -swayed twigs of 

 the weeping -willow 2 . The fact that birds build in 



1 ' Good Words for the Young,' June 1870. Animal Defences. By 

 A. W. Drayson. 



2 Wallace, 'Essays on Natural Selection,' p. 227. 



