Page:The Common Birds of Bombay.djvu/151

Rh into a long tunnel or neck. The rim of this neck is never bound or hemmed. It grows thinner and more flimsy to the end, which is frayed out, affording no firm hold to an enemy. The most daring squirrel will not attempt to clamber round it and get into the nest, especially if there is a well beneath. The mother and her young in their water-tight and windproof chamber will swing in perfect security from every foe but man. There is a curious difference of opinion about the number of eggs laid by the Weaver Bird. Jerdon says two, or at the most three, and is supported by Hume and other good authorities; but the late Mr. Barnes protests that he has examined scores of nests and never found fewer than four, and sometimes as many as six. I have never been a plunderer of nests, but from such experience as I have I should be inclined to agree with Jerdon. It is not impossible that the nests in which Barnes found five or six eggs were chummeries occupied by more than one family.

It used to be the fashion to speak of beasts and animals as being endowed with some mysterious faculty called "instinct," which was a sort of compensation to them for the want of reason. When a bird made a wonderful nest it was supposed to be working by this faculty, without using its intelligence. I think this way of speaking, or thinking, is pretty well exploded now, and I should like to explode it a little more. It is quite true that the lower animals have by inheritance the knowledge of many things which we have to learn for ourselves; but the difference is one of degree, not of kind. So when a bird does a clever thing you may be sure it is a clever bird.