WAYS OF NATURE 
rim of most nests is as true as that of a cup. The 
circle and the sphere exist in nature; they are mo- 
ther forms and hold all other forms. They are 
easily attained; they are spontaneous and inevit- 
able. The bird models her nest about her own 
breast ; she turns round and round in it, and its 
circular character results as a matter of course. 
Angles, right lines, measured precision, so charac- 
teristic of the works of man, are rarely met with 
in organic nature. 
Nature reaches her ends by devious paths; she 
loiters, she meanders, she plays by the way; she 
surely “arrives,” but it is always in a blind, hesitat- 
ing, experimental kind of fashion. Follow the tun- 
nels of the ants or the crickets, or of the moles and 
the weasels, underground, or the courses of the 
streams or the paths of the animals above ground 
— how they turn and hesitate, how wayward and 
undecided they are! A right line seems out of the 
question. 
The oriole often weaves strings into her nest; 
sometimes she binds and overhands the part of the 
rim where she alights in going in, to make it stronger, 
but it is always done in a hit-or-miss, childish sort 
of way, as one would expect it to be; the strings are 
massed, or snarled, or left dangling at loose ends, or 
are caught around branches; the weaving and the 
sewing are effective, and the whole nest is a mar- 
vel of blind skill, of untaught intelligence; yet how 
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