206 The Naturalist in Siluria. 



It is the argument of those who believe in immutable 

 and infallible instinct that the habits of birdsj etc., are 

 unchangeable, the bee building a cell to-day exactly as 

 it built one centuries before our era. Have we not here, 

 however, a modification of habit ? The jackdaw could 

 not have originally built in tall stone buildings. The 

 jackdaw was clever enough, and had reason sufficient, to 

 enable him to see how these high isolated positions suited 

 his peculiar habits ; and I am bold enough to think if the 

 bee could be shown a better method of building her 

 comb she would in time come to use it." 



Does this writer not know that jackdaws breed also in 

 cliffs, where they unquestionably bred before churches or 

 high dwelling-houses were built ? So, too, does the 

 swift, swallow, starling, and some other birds which have 

 also taken to church towers and other tall buildings as 

 well. But what is there remarkable in this, or where 

 the adaptation to changed circumstances ? Some modifi- 

 cation, it is true, but nothing more. These birds saw in 

 the church tower, castle's keep, and chimneys of high 

 houses just such places of security as the cliff afforded; 

 hence their selecting them as a habitat, without any 

 change of habit worth commenting upon. 



As to the writer's analogy about the bee, though 

 professedly conjectural, there have been facts recorded of 

 this insect proving on its part a much more remarkable 

 adaptation to changed conditions. Of all created things 

 one would suppose it to move along lines limited by 

 natural laws, with habits unalterable. Yet is it on record 

 that a hive of Ligurian bees, carried across the Atlantic 

 to tropical South America, and there set up as colonists, 

 in the first year produced full honeycombs, in the second 

 only half full, and the third none at all ! The sagacious 



