WAYS OF NATURE 
the nest, and usually builds it unaided. The life of 
the male is more or less a holiday or picnic till the 
young are hatched, when his real cares begin, for 
he does his part in feeding them. One may see the 
male cedar-bird attending the female as she is busy 
with her nest-building, but never, so far as I have 
observed, assisting her. One spring I observed with 
much interest a phoebe-bird building her nest not 
far from my cabin in the woods. The male looked 
on approvingly, but did not help. He perched most 
of the time on a mullein stalk near the little spring 
run where Phoebe came for mud. In the early 
morning hours she made her trips at intervals of a 
minute or two. The male flirted his tail and called 
encouragingly, and when she started up the hill 
with her load he would accompany her part way, 
to help her over the steepest part, as it were, then 
return to his perch and watch and call for her re- 
turn. For an hour or more I witnessed this little 
play in bird life, in which the female’s part was so 
primary and the male’s so secondary. There is 
something in such things that seems to lend support 
to Professor Lester F. Ward’s contention, as set 
forth in his “Pure Sociology,” that in the natural 
evolution of the two sexes the female was first and 
the male second ; that he was made from her rib, 
so to speak, and not she from his. 
With our phalarope and a few Australian birds, 
the position of the two sexes as indicated above 
112 
