V 
THE PHILOSOPHY OP BIRDS’ NESTS 
101 
ancient inhabitants of the hottest regions, and are par- 
ticularly addicted to forming their first settlements at the 
mouths of rivers or creeks, or in land-locked bays and inlets. 
They are a pre-eminently maritime or semi-aquatic people, 
to whom a canoe is a necessary of life, and who will never 
travel by land if they can do so by water. In accordance 
with these tastes, they have built their houses on posts in 
the water, after the manner of the lake-dwellers of ancient 
Europe ; and this mode of construction has become so con- 
firmed, that even those tribes which have spread far into the 
interior, on dry plains and rocky mountains, continue to build 
in exactly the same manner, and find safety in the height to 
which they elevate their dwellings above the ground. 
Why does each Bird build a peculiar hind of Nest ? 
These general characteristics of the abode of savage man 
will be found to be exactly paralleled by the nests of birds. 
Each species uses the materials it can most readily obtain, 
and builds in situations most congenial to its habits. The 
wren, for example, frequenting hedgerows and low thickets, 
builds its nest generally of moss, a material always found 
where it lives, and among which it probably obtains much of 
its insect food ; but it varies sometimes, using hay or feathers 
when these are at hand. Rooks dig in pastures and ploughed 
fields for grubs, and in doing so must continually encounter 
roots and fibres. These are used to line its nest. What more 
natural ! The crow feeding on carrion, dead rabbits, and 
lambs, and frequenting sheep-walks and warrens, chooses fur 
and wool to line its nest. The lark frequents cultivated 
fields, and makes its nest, on the ground, of dry grass-stems 
lined with finer grass and rootlets — materials the most easy 
to meet with, and the best adapted to its needs. The king- 
fisher makes its nest of the bones of the fish which it has 
eaten. Swallows use clay and mud from the margins of the 
ponds and rivers over which they find their insect food. The 
materials of birds’ nests, like those used by savage man for 
his house, are, then, those which come first to hand ; and it 
certainly requires no more special instinct to select them in 
one case than in the other. 
But, it will be said, it is not so much the materials as the 
