Show INSTINCT all V birds and insects that occasionally sio nally mako make blunders feathered creatures Cre ture accused of if in the e selection of alloo for far stet ant Is not always ales london the wisdom ot of the little people ts is a subject of never charm to those who love them and it to Is with a certain degree of hesitation that I 1 draw your attention to on one or two curious instances atances In of what may bo be amed ss says a writer in the tha london weekly telegraph they are worth studying because they the throw somo some light on the vexed question of instinct versus reason no subject ts la better worth attention none nona more frequently alou misunderstood understood tor for in many any an action which wo we carelessly resign assign to intelligence I 1 la really tho the result of instinct A bird does not learn to build a nest nor does it reason out the best way of setting to work it simply follows its ita instinct and acts as countless generations of its kind have done in the past remember such euch a busy worker cannoa canno bo be said to bo be following the example oits parents since it never saw them at a work even better instances of this may be found among the teeming members of the insect world for they are usually orphaned at the time of their birth yet they contrive carry out t the most mosi complicated worx work with no one to guide them and no pattern before them wisdom then Is clearly a word which must not be too lightly used and perhaps I 1 ought not to accuse the little workers of lack of it but rather of occasional blunders exact terms are always dangerous cangero us things to deal with for they tempt one to wander into the maze of and once there it Is difficult to get away again the man who knows more of the ways of spiders than perhaps any one else in the world of course I 1 mean AT faber for a long time studied the tha habits of that maternal spider which carries a sort of egg basket about with her instead of 0 depositing her eggs in a suitable spot and leaving them alone the spider in question has comic in for much praise the tender solicitude she betrays for her future brood being beautiful alas when she la is made the victim of a sort of practical joke and has a little round of cork given her bustead of her precious treasure she carries it just as carefully and never finds out the difference ants in spite of their vaunted vaunted wisdom may be tricked in much the same way being made to carry such lumber as beads under the impression that they are harvesting their mistake however Is not as sad in its results as aa that of the ny fly which lays its eggs on the evil smelling carrion plant under the impression that it IL has found a particularly putrid and therefore desirable piece of meat birds occasionally though only occasionally sio nally make sad blunders in their choice of a nesting site some of the water fowl laying in a spot which Is pretty sure to be under water before the eggs are hatched again in some instances two cuckoo eggs have been discovered in the same nest and the bird has been blamed for making such men a mistake as to imagine that two children of hers could possibly occupy such cramped quarters I 1 am not satisfied that this criticism Is fair because it Is possible that the eggs are those of two rivals though even then it might be argued that the second bird ought to know better than to choose a nest already engaged that she should fall to do so BO is perhaps yet another example of this most birds brutal indifference to her future she really Is shocking but perhaps the strangest blunder of all Is that made by the lemming which marches in its thousands doat to the sea and to all intents and pur poses commits the crime of felo do de se if he really means to end his days daya then we cannot fairly describe tho the action as a blunder the general opinion Is however that the deed Is the result of a mistake surely the tha most gigantic ever made the lemming however Is too interesting a creature to be dismissed lightly ile he must have hava a paragraph to himself some day he Is the strangest and most persistent suicide whatever tha that tover ever died |