PHILOSOPHY OF DR. ERASMUS DARWIN. 20I 



Nothing can well be plainer and more uncompromis- 

 ing than the above. Professor Hering would, I gather, 

 no less than myself, refer the building of its nest by a 

 bird to the intense — but unconscious, owing to its very 

 perfection and intensity — recollection by the bird of 

 the nests it built when it was in the persons of its an- 

 cestors ; this memory would begin to stimulate action 

 when the surrounding associations, such as temperature, 

 state of vegetation, &c., reminded it of the time when it 

 had been in the habit of beginning to build in countless 

 past generations. Dr. Darwin does not go so far as this. 

 He says that wild birds choose spring as their building 

 time " from their acqmreA knowledge that the mild 

 temperature of the air is more convenient for hatching 

 their eggs," and a little lower down he speaks of the 

 fact that graminivorous animals generally produce their 

 young in spring, as " part of the traditional knowledge 

 which they learn /rom the example of their parents." * 



Again he says, that birds " seem to be instructed 

 how to build their nests from their observation of that 

 in which they were educated, and from their knowledge 

 of those things that are most agreeable to their touch 

 in respect to warmth, cleanliness, and stability." 



Had Dr. Darwin laid firmly hold of two superficial 

 facts concerning memory which we can all of us test for 

 ourselves — I mean its dormancy imtil kindled by the 

 return of a sufficient number of associated ideas, and 

 its unselfconsciousnees upon becoming intense and 

 perfect — and had he connected these two facts with the 

 unity of life through successive generations — an idea 

 * ' Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 170. 



