, they must be taken out of hearing of their parents very
soon, for in the first three or four days they have already acquired
some knowledge of the parent notes, which they will afterwards imitate.
This shows that very young birds can both hear and remember, and it
would be very extraordinary if, after they could see, they could neither
observe nor recollect, and could live for days and weeks in a nest and
know nothing of its materials and the manner of its construction.
During the time they are learning to fly and return often to the nest,
they must be able to examine it inside and out in every detail, and as
we have seen that their daily search for food invariably leads them
among the materials of which it is constructed, and among places similar
to that in which it is placed, is it so very wonderful that when they
want one themselves they should make one like it? How else, in fact,
should they make it? Would it not be much more remarkable if they went
out of their way to get materials quite different from those used in the
parent nest, if they arranged them in a way they had seen no example of,
and formed the whole structure differently from that in which they
themselves were reared, and which we may fairly presume is that which
their whole organization is best adapted to put together with celerity
and ease? It has, however, been objected that observation, imitation, or
memory, can have nothing to do with a bird's architectural powers,
because the young birds, which in England are born in May or June, will
proceed in the following April or May to build a nest as perfect and as
beautiful as that in which it was hatched, although it could never have
seen one built. But surely the young birds _before_ they left the nest
had ample opportunities of observing its _form_, its _size_, its
_position_, the _materials_ of which it was constructed, and the manner
in which those materials were arranged. Memory would retain these
observations till the following spring, when the materials would come in
their way during their daily search for food, and it seems highly
probable that the older birds would begin building first, and that those
born the preceding summer would follow their example, learning from them
how the foundations of the nest are laid and the materials put
together.[H]

+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| [H] It has been very pertinently remarked by a friend, that, |
| if young