NOVEMBER 269 



the necessity for turning them ? It is to be noted that 

 each generation of mound-builders would have to make 

 these discoveries for itself, because, albeit nobody knows 

 how precise and various may be the instruction imparted 

 to its young by a bird which broods upon its eggs and 

 sedulously attends to its chicks, the megapode mother 

 undertakes no such duties. The young birds are hatched 

 in her absence ; they find their food and their way through 

 the forest without her guidance. Nor can we get out of 

 the difficulty by explaining mound-building as an imita- 

 tion by young birds of the behaviour of their elders. ' The 

 mound-constructing instinct,' says Mr. Savile Kent, ' is so 

 strongly ingrained by heredity that young birds taken 

 fresh from the nest, and confined under favourable con- 

 ditions, have at once commenced to construct mounds 

 after the characteristic manner of their tribe.' 



The mystery of megapode intelligence seems too pro- 

 found to receive explanation by ordinary evolutionary 

 process. If the disciplined understanding of Lord Kelvin 

 is forced by the contemplation of a spray of moss to 

 apprehend the presence of a directing Power, humbler 

 students in Nature's class-room may be pardoned for 

 speculating about an ultimate external source of sagacity, 

 common to men and other animals. 



Reflections such as these land one plump in teleology 

 the deliberate design and adaptation of creatures T^ Yucca 

 and their organs by an external Power to a specific MoUl 

 end ; and this has fallen far out of favour as a key to the 

 phenomena of animated nature; yet how hard it is to 



