Not Instinct — Reasoning Power. 173 



threatened from other and very different causes with 

 extinction. This is exactly in the Hne of Mr. Dar- 

 win's own " survival of the fittest ; " but the " fittest " 

 precisely by the possession of an order of powers 

 that at the right moment come into play and lift it 

 clean above its own earlier dominating instincts, 

 strictly viewed. The same thing might in many 

 ways be shown in the case of swallows and house- 

 martins, as we have already dwelt upon them. 



Dr. Russel Wallace, after a survey of such facts as 

 these, decides, and we are not surprised at the 

 decision, that " The mental qualities exhibited by 

 birds in the construction of their nests are the same in 

 kind as those manifested by mankind in the formation 

 of their dwellings." 



Of course, it has been well pointed out by Dr. 

 St. George Mivart and others that " survival of the 

 fittest " from one point of view means nothing — 

 means only "survival of those that survive" — here 

 we have something that puts a meaning into the 

 phrase, when we find that new or latent powers have 

 been called into play to promote the continuance, 

 well-being and increase of the species. 



Dr. Russel Wallace gave some excellent arguments 

 from the wise and skilful adaptations of birds to 

 changes in the materials and structure of men's 

 houses as, for example, the changes resorted to 

 in England at a definite time by the swallows on the 

 adoption of brick or stone houses, instead of wood 

 that had been held by for centuries, as well as from 

 their stupidity and failures ; and here he had to say 

 that in these cases it was failure not of instinct but 

 of reasoning power. Darwin's disciples are great 



