DEVIOUS PATHS 
unmethodical, how delightfully irregular, how un- 
mistakably a piece of wild nature! 
Sometimes the instinct of the bird is tardy, and 
the egg of the bird gets ripe before the nest is ready; 
in such a case the egg is of course lost. I once found 
the nest of the black and white creeping warbler in 
a mossy bank in the woods, and under the nest was 
an egg of the bird. The warbler had excavated the 
site for her nest, dropped her egg into it, and then 
gone on with her building. Instinct is not always 
inerrant. Nature is wasteful, and plays the game 
with a free hand. Yet what she loses on one side she 
gains on another; she is like that least bittern Mr. 
Frank M. Chapman tells about. Two of the bittern’s 
five eggs had been punctured by the long-billed 
marsh wren. When the bird returned to her nest 
and found the two eggs punctured, she made no 
outcry, showed no emotion, but deliberately pro- 
ceeded to eat them. Having done this, she dropped 
the empty shells over the side of the nest, together 
with any straws that had become soiled in the pro- 
cess, cleaned her bill, and proceeded with her incu- 
bation. This was Nature in a nut-shell, — or rather 
egg-shell, —turning her mishaps to some good ac- 
count. If the egg will not make a bird, it will make 
food; if not food, then fertilizer. 
Among nearly all our birds, the female is the 
active business member of the partnership; she has 
a turn for practical affairs; she chooses the site of 
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