V 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF BIRDS’ NESTS 
113 
to make it into a kind of felt. The birds pressed it with 
their bodies, turning round upon them in every direction, so 
as to get it quite firm and smooth before raising the sides. 
These were added bit by bit, trimmed and beaten with the 
wings and feet, so as to felt the whole together, projecting 
fibres being now and then worked in with the bill. By these 
simple and apparently inefficient means, the inner surface of 
the nest was rendered almost as smooth and compact as a 
piece of cloth. 
Man's Works mainly Imitative 
But look at civilised man ! it is said ; look at Grecian, and 
Egyptian, and Roman, and Gothic, and modern architecture ! 
What advance ! what improvement ! what refinements ! This 
is what reason leads to, whereas birds remain for ever 
stationary. If, however, such advances as these are required 
to prove the effects of reason as contrasted with instinct, then 
all savage and many half-civilised tribes have no reason, but 
build instinctively quite as much as birds do. 
Man ranges over the whole earth, and exists under the 
most varied conditions, leading necessarily to equally varied 
habits. He migrates — he makes wars and conquests — one 
race mingles with another — different customs are brought 
into contact — the habits of a migrating or conquering race 
are modified by the different circumstances of a new country. 
The civilised race which conquered Egypt must have de- 
veloped its mode of building in a forest country where timber 
was abundant, for it is not probable that the idea of cylin- 
drical columns originated in a country destitute of trees. The 
pyramids might have been built by an indigenous race, but 
not the temples of Luxor and Karnak. In Grecian archi- 
tecture almost every characteristic feature can be traced to an 
origin in wooden buildings. The columns, the architrave, the 
frieze, the fillets, the cantilevers, the form of the roof, all 
point to an origin in some southern forest-clad country, and 
strikingly corroborate the view derived from philology, that 
Greece was colonised from north-western Lidia. But to erect 
columns and span them with huge blocks of stone, or marble, 
is not an act of reason, but one of pure unreasoning imita- 
tion. The arch is the only true and reasonable mode of 
covering over wide spaces with stone, and, therefore, Grecian 
I 
