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. SavUe 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 me Tucca 

 and their organs by an external Power to a specific ^°*^ 

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

 phenomena of animated nature; yet how hard it is to 



