THE WEONG TUKNING 91 



fanning. The South American cow-birds (Molothrus) 

 foist their eggs upon other birds and in varying degrees 

 of parasitism : M. mfoaxillaris , hers upon a congener, 

 M. badius, and the similarity both of the eggs and the 

 chicks in the two species is so exact that the two families 

 are reared in the same nest without any sacrifice. 

 Parasitism has become, as it were, so specialized as to be 

 immune to itself. Now the cow-birds are distant rela- 

 tives of our starling, which does sometimes appropriate 

 the nesting sites of woodpeckers, wrynecks, nuthatches, 

 etc., a departure on the borderline of parasitism. There 

 is nothing at all surprising in this. For if human virtues 

 can be paralleled in the animal world, as without any 

 question they can be, we should expect to find analogues 

 of human vices. And we do find them (the weasel, for 

 instance, appears to have a taste for blood over and above 

 the utility of killing for food, which is not a vice but a 

 natural law), though very rarely, obviously because 

 animals are less highly developed in moral complexity 

 than we are. And if the process of evolution implies the 

 gradual working out of the egoistic strain in life and the 

 equally gradual working in of altruism, or rather a gradual 

 refinement of and harmony between them as it is quite 

 legitimate to think it may it is not at all remarkable 

 that we should find examples of (mostly individual) 

 animals sinning against the light their light. 



