Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/185

Rh except in remote regions, where the ingenious bird still works on in the primitive way. So, too, in America, birds in constructing their nests everywhere turn to their account the products of human industry and keep abreast with the progress of the age. The materials employed correspond to the contemporary state of civilization, and mark the periods of industrial development through which the human race has passed. The wagtails, in a watch-making district of Switzerland, have learned to build their nests of fine steel shavings; a nest of this kind, if preserved, would indicate to the inhabitants of that country a thousand years hence the kind of industry that was carried on by their ancestors. Sparrows, which usually build in chinks of walls or under roofs, if forced to build their nests in trees or other unsheltered places, cover them with a sort of hood to keep out the rain. Buffon, who records this fact, adds: L'instinct se manifest done ici par un sentiment presque raisonné et qui suppose au moins la comparaison de deux petites idées. In the presence of such clear manifestations of thought and reflection, it seems absurd to speak of a "sentiment almost reasoned," or to indulge in condescending baby-talk about "two little ideas."

Apiarists now provide their hives with artificial comb for the storage of honey, and the bees seem glad to be relieved of the labor of making cells as their predecessors had done. Instead of gathering propolis from the buds of plants, the workers stop their hives with the mixture of resin and turpentine with which the arboriculturist salves wounded trees, and readily substitute oatmeal for pollen if they can get it. These facts, and many others which might be adduced, suffice to prove that animals avail themselves of new discoveries and easier methods in order to increase the comforts and conveniences of life.

Even instincts, which seem firmly rooted and are regarded as characteristic of the class, are by no means so persistent as is commonly supposed. The individual inherits, but soon loses them if they are not brought into early exercise. A duck or gosling, if reared in the house until it is two or three months old, has no greater liking for the water than a chicken, and if thrown into a pond will scramble out, showing signs of great fear of the element to which its web-feet are particularly adapted. An artificially hatched chicken does not attach itself to a hen more than to any other animal, but follows its first associate, a child, a cat, or a dog.

Buffon denies that animals are susceptible of what he calls "the perfectibility of the species." "They are to-day," he says, "what they always have been, and always will be, and nothing more; because, as their education is purely individual, they can only transmit to their young what they themselves have received