NATURE 289 
as the results of their individual experiences. With 
wings there comes to the bird the power to use them. 
Why, then, should we believe that because the human 
infant is born without teeth, it should, when they do make 
their appearance, have to discover their use? The 
swallow, the first time it is in the air takes care, or rather 
does not need to take care, not to dash its brains out 
against a stone wall. Why, then, should we believe man 
to have no instinctive faculty of interpreting his visual 
sensations ? ; DOUGLAS A. SPALDING 
Aug. 7, 1873] 
drift of the glacial period did not once extend over 
the counties south of the Thames has yet to be demon- 
strated, and those geologists who hold that we have 
already discovered the original southern limits of the 
glacial clays and gravels in England, have yet to explain 
the condition of these deposits of the north brow of the 
Thames Valley, where they are as pelagic in character as 
they are a hundred miles farther north, 
The dwellers in the south of England havethus been com- 
pensated for their distance from the bolder region of the old 
British glaciers, of perched blocks, and terminal moraines. 
The glacial period has now been brought home, as it 
were, to their own doors. By the classification of the 
glacial beds which we now possess, patches of clay and 
gravel which seemed to have a sporadic and insignificant 
character are seen to belong to a great and historical 
series. Inthe presence of such “diluvium” as that of 
Muswell Hill, with its astonishing medley of organic 
remains, it needs no longer to be asked,— 
‘¢ What seas receding from what former world 
Consigned these tribes to stony sepulchres ?” 
We know now that it was an icy sea. 
BRITISH ARCHAOLOGICAL INSTITUTE 
HE annual meeting of this Institute commenced at 
Exeter on Tuesday, July 29, the President for the 
year being the arl of Devon. Many valuable papers 
were read, and many interesting excursions made in the 
neighbourhood ; the reception by the Mayor, the local 
authorities, and the inhabitants generally, has been most 
enthusiastic. The Congress was brought to a close on 
Tuesday last, and is declared to have been the most 
successful meeting of the kind ever held. Of the many 
valuable papers read we give the following by Dr. 
E. A. Freeman, on “The Place of Exeter in English 
History.” 
He remarked that it sometimes came into the 
mind of an English traveller in other lands that the 
cities of his own country must seem of small account 
in the eyes of a traveller from the land which he 
visited. He spoke of course as an antiquary and not 
of modern prosperity and splendour. As a rule an 
English town did not make the same impression as an 
artistic and antiquarian object as did towns of Italy, 
Germany, Burgundy, France, or Aquitaine But whilst 
we had few cities as rich at once in history and art as 
many of those on the Continent, yet we need not grieve ; 
for whatever was taken from particular districts was 
added to the general history of our country. Why was the 
history of Nuremburg greater than that of Exeter? 
Simply because the history of England was greater than 
that of Germany, The domestic history of an English 
town which had always been content to be a municipality, 
and had never aspired to be a sovereign commonwealth, 
seemed tame beside the stirring annals of the free cities 
of Italy and Germany. But for that especial reason it had 
a value of its own, it had not struggled for the greatness 
of its own, but it had done its work as part of a greater 
whole—it had played its part in building up a nation. 
And the comparison beween the lowly English munici- 
pality and the proud Italian or German commonwealth 
had also an interest of another kind, The difference 
between the two was simply the difference implied in the 
absence of political independence in the one case and its 
presence in the other. The difference was purely external 
~_the internal constitution—history and revolutions—often 
presenting the most striking analogies. In both might 
often be seen the change from democracy to oligarchy, and 
from oligarchy to democracy. In both they might see 
men who, in old Greece, would have taken their places as 
demagogues, perhaps tyrants. Exeter had something to 
tell of Earl and Countess of Devon ; Bristol of its half- 
citizens, half tyrants, the Lords of Berkeley. In the free 
cities of the Continent we saw what English cities might 
have been if the royal power in England had been no 
stronger than that of the Emperors, and if England had 
therefore split up into separate states like Germany, Italy, 
and Gaul. In England the constant tendency had been 
to unity and to make every local power subordinate to 
that of the king, and it was this that had made the 
difference between a municipality like Exeter and a 
commonwealth like Florence. In Exeter reflections of 
this kind had a special fitness. No city in England had 
a history which came so near to that of the great conti- 
HENRY WALKER 
o 
FLIGHT NOT AN ACQUISITION 
A FEW weeks ago, when at Ravenscroft (the residence 
of Lord Amberley), I shut up five unfledged 
swallows in a small box not much larger than the nest 
from which they were taken. The little box, which had a 
wire front, was hung on the wall nearthe nest, and the 
young swallows were fed by their parents through the 
wires. In this confinement, where they could not even 
extend their wings, they were kept until after they were fully 
fledged. I was not at Ravenscroft when the birds were libe- 
rated, but the following observations were made by Lord 
and Lady Amberley, who have kindly communicated them 
tome. On going to set the prisoners free, one was found 
dead—they were all alive on the previous day. The re- 
maining four were allowed to escape one ata time. Two 
of these were perceptibly wavering and unsteady in their 
flight. One of them after a flight of about 90 yards dis- 
appeared among some trees; the other, which flew more 
steadily, made a sweeping circuit in the air after the 
manner of its kind, and alighted, or attempted to alight, 
on abranchless stump of a beech ; at least it was no more 
seen. I give the unabridged account of No. 3 and of 
No. 4 as it stands in the notes made at the time by Lady 
Amberley. “No. 3 (which was seen on the wing for about 
half-a-minute), flew near the ground first round Welling- 
tonia, over to the other side of kitchen garden,’ past bee- 
house, back to the lawn, round again, and into a beech 
tree. No. 4 flew well near the ground, over a hedge 
twelve feet high to the kitchen garden, through an open- 
ing into the beeches, and was last seen close to the 
ground.” ‘The following remarks were added _subse- 
quently : “The swallows never flew against anything, nor 
was there in their avoiding objects any appreciable dif- 
ference between them and old birds. No, 3 swept round 
the Wellingtonia, and No. 4 rose over the hedge just as 
we see the old swallows doing every hour of the day.” 
It remains to add that each of these birds was weighted 
with a small collar of coloured cloth, put on for the pur- 
pose of marking them ; and that an old swallow on being 
set free encumbered by a similar adornment, exhibited 
the same unsteadiness in its flight. 
There is little need to make any remark on the above 
facts. In proving the flight of birds, and their power of 
guiding their course through the air in accordance with 
their sensations of sight, not to be an acquisition, they 
support the general doctrine that. all of what may be 
called the professional knowledge and skill of the various 
species of animal$ come to them by intuition, and not 
