IRatuve Motes : 
Z,hc Selborne Society’s flT)aoa3(nc 
No. 93. 
SEPTEMBER, 1897. 
VoL. VIII. 
HOW BIRDS LEARN TO MAKE NESTS AND 
SONGS. 
N interesting question often arises as to how birds come 
to make the nests they do, and sing the several songs 
peculiar to their species. Many of these nests are, we 
know, very elaborate structures ; and the songs that 
some of the birds sing live for ever in poetry, as well as in the 
memories of all who delight in country sights and country 
sounds. And the question arises, quite naturally, how do the 
birds get to do these things ? Is the nest-building taught by 
their ancestors to thrush, chaffinch and long-tailed tit ; and are 
the songs handed on to skylark, or blackcap, or nightingale, 
from one generation to another ? These questions, though they 
press for solution, do not often, if at all, meet with the consider- 
ation that they so admirably deserve. People are fond of 
answering such questions, off-hand, by saying they are done by 
instinct ; but this is a simple way of getting rid of the question 
altogether ; and it is in much the same way that the origin of 
some fine structure on earth is unhesitatingly ascribed to the 
Druids, or to that mighty constructor, the Devil ; and this habit 
gives us Druid’s walls or dykes, and Devil’s punch-bowls or 
bridges, in various parts of many lands. Inquirers seldom 
pause to consider what instinct is, wherein it differs from reason, 
and whether, for instance, man may be considered to possess 
and use this faculty. Instinct may be fairly defined, for our 
purpose, as the performance of complex acts, absolutely without 
instruction or previously acquired knowledge ; and if we look to 
the recognized authorities to ascertain what they suppose may 
be accomplished by instinct, we find that they differ toto coslo. 
One very high authority, who has written on mental evolution 
