2 
8 BOMBAY DUCKS 
imitation dove’s nest you have only to upset half a box 
of matches. “As a boy,” he writes, “I have sometimes 
discovered the nest dy seeing the eggs in it from below! 
It is a mere skeleton, a network, and in its way a 
miracle. In fact, it is not a nest at all.” This, of 
course, is not the poet’s idea of the nest. The bard 
pictures it as a delightfully woven structure, beautifully 
lined with feathers and down. Saith Keats :— 
“Warm as a dove’s nest among summer trees.” 
A draughtier abode than a dove’s nest it would be 
difficult to imagine. To the naturalist, the ghost of a 
nest constructed by the dove is most interesting. It 
possibly throws some light on the origin of the wonderful 
nest-building instinct. How this instinct arose is to me 
one of the most difficult problems in natural history. 
The primitive bird undoubtedly laid its eggs on the 
ground—on the sand, or among rocks and stones. 
Then some bird learned to lay them in the grass, 
Next, perhaps, some species deposited them on a dense 
shrub. Eggs so laid would be apt to slip down and be 
lost, so any tendency to make a surface for the eggs by 
laying a few sticks upon the bush would be to preserve 
by the action of natural selection. By degrees the 
instinct must have developed until we eventually arrive 
at the wonderful nest of the weaver bird. 
This is all pure conjecture, but it seems to me that 
the nest-building instinct must have originated in some 
such manner. Perhaps the dove has kept to the 
methods of its early ancestors, while most of the other 
birds have improved upon them. There is much to be 
