WAYS OF NATURE 
which it is not entitled. He says that in order that 
the mud nest may not advance too rapidly and so 
fall of its own weight, the bird works at it only in the 
morning, and plays and feeds the rest of the day, 
thus giving the mud a chance to harden. Had not 
the genial parson observed that this is the practice 
of all birds during nest-building—that they work 
in the early morning hours and feed and amuse 
themselves the rest of the day? In the case of the 
mud-builders, this interim of course gives the mud 
a chance to harden, but are we justified in crediting 
them with this forethought ? 
Such skill and intelligence as a bird seems to dis- 
play in the building of its nest, and yet at times 
such stupidity! I have known a pheebe-bird to start 
four nests at once, and work more or less upon all 
of them. She had deserted the ancestral sites under 
the shelving rocks and come to a new porch, upon 
the plate of which she started her four nests. She 
blundered because her race had had little or no 
experience with porches. There were four or more 
places upon the plate just alike, and whichever 
one of these she chanced to strike with her loaded 
beak she regarded as the right one. Her instinct 
served her up to a certain point, but it did not 
enable her to discriminate between those rafters. 
Where a little original intelligence should have 
come into play she was deficient. Her progenitors 
had built under rocks where there was little chance 
168 
