506 COMMISSION OF ERROR. 



wardness. Miss Buist tells us of cage birds, that several 

 mates * confined in a cage waste time, play with and spoil 

 each other's preparations, make mistakes as to which nest 

 belongs to them and which to a neighbour, and if they find 

 eggs where they fancy they left fledglings, or vice versa, 

 they unhesitatingly toss everything out, and march off in 

 high dudgeon to occupy another (nest) more to their taste, 

 no matter whether or not this be already engaged. ... Of 

 course frightful fights and endless breakages (of eggs) are 

 the result.' Here is indeed quite a characteristic ' comedy of 

 errors ' quite an instructive commentary on the unerring 

 instinct ideas of theologians. Among rooks also there are per- 

 petual fights and wholesale destruction of each other's nests 

 (White). 



Field hares and birds sometimes get cut in two by 

 scythes, reaping hooks, or reaping machines, while sitting 

 on or with their young. In such a case the animals 

 may have been too much absorbed in their occupation, or 

 they may have been paralysed by fear, or the sense of danger 

 acting on the maternal instinct may have determined them 

 to stick by their young at whatever risk or cost. Mothers 

 sometimes interfere so much with their newly-born, tender 

 offspring as to kill them. They commit a blander of over- 

 fussiness connected with maternal affection. Thus the female 

 octopus kills her ova or young by the sheer stupidity of her 

 maternal solicitude, by the excessive and injudicious exhi- 

 bition of maternal love. She overlays them, and subjects 

 them to other risks of destruction (Lee). 



Closely allied to the subject of nest-building is that of 

 incubation in birds, another of the operations believed to be 

 guided by infallible and inscrutable instinct. But birds 

 make perhaps more frequent and more marked certainly 

 more fatal mistakes in regard to the deposition and hatching 

 of their eggs than in regard even to the construction of 

 their nests. Their errors of incubation include, for in- 

 stance 



1. Premature laying or hatching of eggs. 



2. The selection of unsuitable places as well as times. 



3. The sitting upon the eggs of other species or genera, 



