154 THE PLAY OF ANIMALS. 



in its place, and when the young are hatched and old 

 enough to be handled, to place a second clean nest, also 

 of felt, in the box, removing the other, and this is done 

 to avoid acari. But I never knew that canaries so reared 

 failed to make a nest when the breeding time arrived. 

 I have, on the other hand, marvelled to see how like 

 a wild bird's their nests were constructed/' * 



It is, of course, difficult to determine how much is 

 due to instinct and how much to intelligence, for no 

 one claims that the building of higher animals is purely 

 instinctive. Take, for example, Xaumann's beautiful 

 description of the skilfuU}^ made nests of the golden 

 oriole, so like an inverted nightcap : " One of them 

 (usually the male) comes flying with a long thread or 

 grass blade in his bill and tries to fasten the end of it 

 to a bough, perhaps with the help of his spittle, while 

 the female catches the loose end and ffies with it two or 

 three times around the bough and fastens it in the same 

 way to a forked limb opposite." f 



This can not be all instinct; it is a case where 

 inherited instinct and individual experience work to- 

 gether. The Miillers have expressed their belief that, 

 though old birds usually build better than their young 

 when there is any difference at all, still the instinct for 

 building is, after all, a gift of Nature. J 



" The ravenous screeching young owls do not think 

 of making studies in architecture. ... If the parents 

 have a second brood, the young of the first never come 

 near them, nor does it enter their heads to take lessons 

 in building.* 



* Romanes, Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 226. 



f Naturgeschiohte der Vogel Deutschlands, ii, p. 181. 

 t A. and K. Mliller, Thiere der Heimath, 1, p. 39. 



* Ibid., i, p. 125. 



