Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 6 (1902).djvu/308

258 his 'British Birds,' records the case of a Chaffinch which built a very similar nest in England, with no such pattern to guide it. On the other hand, birds which have been bred for centuries in square boxes fixed in cages, and therefore have had no opportunity, for numerous generations, of inspecting their ancestral homes, when turned loose in an aviary furnished with shrubs, frequently build in the latter nests of the same type as those formed by their wild forefathers. It would be difficult to say when the Japanese first originated the little Bengalee (a true Guinea-pig among birds), of which one ancestor—possibly the only one—was in all probability the Striated Finch (Munia striata). It has been bred in small cages, perhaps for a thousand years. When it is turned into an aviary, and elects to build in a bush, it forms the typical domed nest, with entrance-hole in front, characteristic of all the Mannikins. The Canary, on the other hand, invariably builds the cup-shaped nest characteristic of true Finches. I have had these nests built in my aviaries year after year by different birds, invariably reared in the ordinary London breeding-cage.

If we deny inherited memory to birds, how are we to account for the natural fear which hand-reared birds always exhibit at the sight of a Cat; they can have no personal experience of danger connected with the presence of that creature, yet all alike are terrified at the sight of it. The Canary, which has been so coddled by man that it has become stupid, and has been so constantly accustomed to the sight of Cats for many generations, that its natural dread of them has been blunted, is perhaps the only type of bird which frequently loses its life through the loss of the instinctive fear which might have saved it.

It is generally believed that because in certain groups of Weavers the male bird is accustomed to build the nest, therefore the female is unable to do so. This I disproved in the case of a pair of Pyromelœna franciscana, which I purchased about the year 1885, the hen of which built and nearly completed a nest, but unhappily died (as did the cock bird) before it was finished. In like manner it is supposed that the hens of the true Finches only are able to build, but in 1895 I bred Goldfinches in one of my aviaries. The first nest was entirely built by the hen, but the second nest was built entirely by the cock, before the young