80 THE CONDOR Vol. XXI 
The writer has often met in the layman’s mind, a tendency to read into 
the behavior of lower animals the impulses of the human brain. Further still, 
some would impose upon the lower animal the restrictions of the Mosaic Law. 
In case the human law have no foundation in biologic law, is there any reason 
why it should be imposed upon the lower animal? On the other hand, let us 
examine some of the laws of human ethics and see if they are merely different 
ways of stating laws of nature. I have already used in the preceding pages of 
this now too long article the words ‘‘reprehensible’’, ‘‘recalcitrant’’, and ‘‘va- 
grant’’, but is it proper to do so? J maintain that the ethics which demands 
that the marital tie shall last ‘‘till death do us part’’ should not be imposed in 
those words upon the bird but that the same law, recast in terms of biology, is 
applicable to, and is observed by, a multitude of bird species. Let that law 
read thus: ‘‘The male and female shall cooperate during the period of the 
young’s dependency upon parental care.’’ Will it not work out for humans in 
the majority of cases, almost as well as does the ritual? — | 
Take two biologic humans, uninfluenced by the artificial conditions of 
our later civilization. They establish the marital tie at the age of twenty years. 
The first offspring is born within the year and becomes independent at the age 
of eighteen or twenty. In the meantime there have appeared, at intervals of 
two years, other offspring to the number of ten. Is this an exaggeration for the 
biologic human family? By the time the last young is independent, the parents 
have lived in active cooperation for the period of forty years, and have reached 
the age of sixty. They had best not attempt any readjustment at that age, 
even though they have no grandchildren on their hands. The ethical law is 
really a viologic law and we didn’t know it. 
Apply the same restriction to the bird and you have a cooperative period 
not extending, as a rule, beyond the spring and summer of each single year, 
and sometimes for even less time than that. There is no biologic demand for a 
greater prolongation of the marital tie. Certainly there is nothing in the birds’ © 
code of ethics. Why hold to a human lettering of the law? 
State Normal School, Los Angeles, Califorma, February 1, 1919. 
THE SUMMER BIRDS OF HAZELTON, BRITISH COLUMBIA* 
By P. A. TAVERNER 
WITH ONE PHOTO 
the forks where the stream is formed by the junction of the Bulkley and ~ 
Babine rivers. It is the most northern point reached by the Grand ‘ 
Trunk Pacific Railroad, hence, with the exception of points on the new Hud- ~~ 
son Bay Railroad, it is the most northern station reached by any of the main 
railway systems in America. In latitude 55° 20’, it is on line with the mouth 
of James Bay and slightly north of Hamilton Inlet on the Labrador coast. Sit- 
uated as it is, at the head of navigation on the Skeena River, the supply route 
*Published by permission of the Geological Survey, Ottawa, Canada. 
H AZELTON, BRITISH COLUMBIA, is at the head of the Skeena River, at 
