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thev THE PHILOSOPHY OF BIRDS' NESTS 117to be washed away by a heavy rain and their young onesdestroyed.ConclusionA fair consideration of all these facts will, I think, fullysupport the statement with which I commenced, and showthat the chief mental faculties exhibited by birds in constructionof their nests are the same in kind as those manifestedby mankind in the formation of their dwellings..Theseare, essentially, imitation, and a slow and partial adaptationto new conditions. To compare the work of birds with thehighest manifestations of human art and science is totallybeside the question. I do not maintain that birds are giftedwith reasoning faculties at all approaching in variety andextent to those of man. I simply hold that the phenomenapresented by their mode of building their nests, when fairlycompared with those exhibited by the great mass of mankindin building their houses, indicate no essential difference in thekind or nature of the mental faculties employed. If instinctmeans anything, it means the capacity to perform some complexact without teaching or experience. It implies not onlyinnate ideas but innate knowledge of a very definite kind, and,if established, would overthrow Mr. Mill's sensationalism andall the modern philosophy of experience. That the existenceof true instinct may be established in other cases is notimpossible but in the;particular instance of birds' nests, whichis usually considered one of its strongholds, I cannot find aparticle of evidence to show the existence of anything beyondthose lower reasoning and imitative powers which animalsare universally admitted to possess.