WAYS OF NATURE 
but his sagacity fails him when interpreting the 
action of the jay in roosting in an exposed place 
after it had been given its liberty. He thinks this 
showed how little instinct can be relied on, and 
how much the bird needed parental instruction. 
Could he not see that the artificial life of the bird 
in the cage had demoralized its instincts, and that 
acquired habits had supplanted native tendencies ? 
The bird had learned to be unafraid in the cage, 
and why should it be afraid out of the cage? This 
reminds me of a letter from a correspondent: he had 
a tame crow that was not afraid of a gun; therefore 
he concluded that the old crows must instill the fear 
of guns into their young! Why should the crow be 
afraid of a gun, if it had learned not to be afraid 
of the gunner? 
I have seen a young chickadee fly late in the day 
from the nest in the cavity of a tree straight to a 
pear-tree, where it perched close to the trunk and 
remained unregarded by its parents till next morn- 
ing. But no doubt its parents had given it minute 
directions before it left the nest how to fly and 
where to perch! 
That animals learn by experience in a limited way 
is very certain. Yet that old birds build better nests 
or sing better than young ones it would be hard 
to prove, though it seems reasonable that it should 
be so. 
Rarely does one see nests of the same species of 
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