FACTORS IN ANIMAL LIFE 
or I would have done it! From this framework they 
suspended their nest, the whole structure being 
about two feet long, and having the effect of a small 
hanging basket. Still more astonishing, when the 
genuineness of the nest is questioned, a man is 
found who makes affidavit that he saw the orioles 
build it! After such a proceeding, how long will it 
be before the water-birds are building little rush 
cradles for their young, or rush boats to be driven 
about the ponds and lakes by means of leaf sails, or 
before Jenny Wren will be living in a log cabin of 
her own construction? How long will it be before 
some one makes affidavit that the sparrow with his 
bow and arrow has actually been seen to kill Cock 
Robin, and the beetle with his thread and needle en- 
gaged in making the shroud? Birds show the taste 
and skill of their kind in building their nests, but 
rarely any individual ingenuity and inventiveness. 
The nest referred to is on a plane entirely outside 
of Nature and her processes. It belongs to a differ- 
ent order of things, the order of mechanical contriv- 
ances, and was of course “made up,” probably from 
a real oriole’s nest, and the writer who vouches for 
its genuineness has been the victim of a clever prac- 
tical joke — a willing victim, no doubt, since he is 
looking in Nature for just this kind of thing, and 
since he believes there is “absolutely no limit to the 
variety and adaptiveness of Nature even in a single 
species.” If there is no such limit, then I suppose 
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