also achieves many things through practice alone, or
through the same process of trial and failure. Much of his manual
skill comes in this way, but he learns certain things through the
exercise of his reason; he sees how the thing is done, and the
relation of the elements of the problem to one another. The trained
animal never sees _how_ the thing is done, it simply does it
automatically, because certain sense impressions have been stamped
upon it till a habit has been formed, just as a man will often wind
his watch before going to bed, or do some other accustomed act,
without thinking of it.

The bird builds her nest and builds it intelligently, that is, she
adapts means to an end; but there is no reason to suppose that she
_thinks_ about it in the sense that man does when he builds his house.
The nest-building instinct is stimulated into activity by outward
conditions of place and climate and food supply as truly as the growth
of a plant is thus stimulated.

As I look upon the matter, the most wonderful and ingenious nests in
the world, as those of the weaver-birds and orioles, show no more
independent self-directed and self-originated thought than does the
rude nest of the pigeon or the cuckoo. They evince a higher grade of
intelligent instinct, and that is all. Both are equally the result of
natural promptings, and not of acquired skill, or the lack of it. One
species of bird will occasionally learn the song of another species,
but the song impulse must be there to begin with, and this must be
stimulated in the right way at the right time. A caged English sparrow
has been known to learn the song of the canary caged with or near it,
but the sparrow certainly inherits the song impulse. One has proof of
this when he hears a company of these sparrows sitting in a tree in
spring chattering and chirping in unison, and almost reaching an
utterance that is song-like. Our cedar-bird does not seem to have the
song impulse, and I doubt if it could ever be taught to sing. In like
manner our ruffed grouse has but feeble vocal powers, and I do not
suppose it would learn to crow or cackle if brought up in the
barn-yard. It expresses its joy at the return of spring and the mating
season in its drum, as do the woodpeckers.

The recent English writer Richard Kearton says there is "no such dead
level of unreasoning instinct" in the animal world as is popularly
supposed, and he seems to base the remark upon the fact that he found
c