THE MASTER INSTINCT 



but if it had, not later than June, they would prob- 

 ably have built still another nest. The phoebes usu- 

 ally rear two broods in a season when all goes well 

 with them. It is to build the nest and rear the young 

 that they have made the long and hazardous jour- 

 ney from our Southland, or even from Central 

 America, and it is this that will cause them to make 

 it every spring as long as they live. It is this that 

 impels myriads of other small birds and water-fowl 

 to make the same trip from the Far South, braving 

 storms and winds and other perils by land and sea. 

 To beget progeny that will in time reproduce them- 

 selves is the unconscious and unquenchable motive 

 that actuates them all. This same motive impels 

 the golden plover to make its marvelous flight from 

 the plains of Patagonia to the Arctic Circle in 

 Alaska, a distance of nearly half the circumference 

 of the globe, crossing oceans without a rest. It sends 

 the European migrants across the Mediterranean 

 from Africa to France, many of them so fatigued on 

 reaching land that they fall an easy prey to man and 

 beast. 



It is the impelling force of this motive or instinct 

 that sends the fish up the streams and rivers in the 

 spring, making the waters alive with denizens from 

 the sea, impelling the salmon to leap falls, or, failing 

 to scale them, to keep up the effort till they die from 

 exhaustion. The breeding-instinct is the ruler of life. 

 It asks no questions, it requires no guarantee, it 



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