Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/183

Rh their laws and traditions, and preserve a sort of historical continuity by which past and present are bound together in a certain orderly sequence. Bee-hives which suffer from over-population rear a queen and send forth with her a swarm of emigrants to colonize, and the relations of the mother-hive to her colonies are known to be much closer and more cordial than those which she sustains to apian communities with which she has no genetic connection. Here the ties of kinship are as strong and clearly recognized as they are between consanguineous tribes of men.

Again, the statement that animal habits are fixed, and human customs variable and improvable, is true only to a very limited extent. Closer observation has shown the latter to be more stable and the former more mutable than is generally imagined, especially if we compare the highest orders of animals with the lowest human tribes. In primitive society and among savage races customs remain the same for countless generations, and seem to be quite as persistent and incapable of change as animal instincts.

Not only do animals, often in the course of a comparatively short period, undergo marvelous transformations both of mind and body, through the force of natural selection or by careful interbreeding, but they are also led by circumstances and through forethought to make conscious and intentional changes in their manner of life.

It is curious to note the variety of characteristics distinguishing members of the same family or genus. Thus, the European cuckoo lays her eggs in the nests of other birds, and leads the life of a shiftless parasite and shameless polyandrous vagabond. The American cuckoo, on the contrary, has not yet learned to shirk her maternal duties and domestic responsibilities, but, like an honest and thrifty housewife and conscientious mother, hatches her own eggs and rears her own young. The South African and Australasian representatives of the cuculinæ follow, in this respect, the habits of the European bird. There is also a species of molothrus, which sometimes begins but seldom finishes a nest, like the hypothetical man in the parable, who would fain build without first sitting down to count the cost. She is seized occasionally with a spasm of virtuous endeavor in this direction, but soon yields to the greater comfort and convenience of imposing upon others the burden of brooding and nurturing her offspring. Evidently she turns the matter over in her mind, and, like Rousseau, reasons herself into the belief that it is better not to assume any family cares, but to cast her children as foundlings upon the bosom of public charity. "There are the goldfinches, thrushes, fly-catchers, cardinal grossbeaks, and other fussy motherly fowl," she seems to say, "willing enough to undertake the charge; why not gratify their low philoprogenitive passion, and thus enable me to devote