PDF - Wallace Online

120 NATURAL SELECTION vinests of many of the swifts and swallows, as well as that ofthe song-thrush peculiaritiesof habits which ultimatelydepend on structure, and which often determine the materialmost frequently met with or most easily to be obtained.Modifications in any of these characters would necessarilylead either to a change in the materials of the nest, or in themode of combining them in the finished structure, or in theform or position of that structure.During all these changes, however, certain specialities ofnest-building would continue for a shorter or a longer timeafter the causes which had necessitated them had passedaway. Such records of a vanished past meet us everywhere,even in man's works, notwithstanding his boasted reason.Not only are the main features of Greek architecture merereproductions in stone of what were originally parts of awooden building, but our modern copyists of Gothic architectureoften build solid buttresses capped with weightypinnacles to support a wooden roof which has no outwardthrust to render them necessary; and even think theyornament their buildings by adding sham spouts of carvedstone, while modern waterpipes, stuck on without any attemptat harmony, do the real duty. So, when railways supersededcoaches, it was thought necessary to build the first-classcarriages to imitate a number of coach-bodies joined together;and the arm-loops for each passenger to hold on by, whichwere useful when bad roads made every journey a successionof jolts and lurches, were continued on our smooth macadamisedmail-routes, and, still more absurdly, remain to this day Jin our railway carriages, the relic of a kind of locomotion wecan now hardly realise. Another good exampleis to be seenin our boots. When elastic sides came into fashion Ave hadbeen so long used to fasten them with buttons or laces, thata boot without either looked bare and unfinished, and accordinglythe makers often put on a row of useless buttons orimitation laces, because habit rendered the appearance ofthem necessary to us. It is universally admitted that thehabits of children and of savages give us the best clue to thehabits and mode of thought of animals and; every one musthave observed how children at first imitate the actions of1 Since this was written they have generally been disused.