A friend phones about that question of uniformity within bird species of patterns of nest-building, to say that his own answer had been to dig out an essay by John Ruskin - that sage of the 19th century who wrote about art, architecture, travel, natural phenomena, education, ethics and religion; more too in volume after volume. And in one of his collected works is an essay on nest-building. Ruskin tells of going to see an ornithologist whose collection of birds was said to be unrivalled in Europe, Mr Gould, who showed Ruskin a nest of a common English bird "which was altogether amazing and delightful to me. It was a bullfinch's nest, which had been set in the fork of a sapling tree, where it needed an extended foundation. And the bird had built this first storey of her nest with withered stalks of clematis blossom, and with nothing else. These twigs it had interwoven lightly, leaving the branched heads all at the outside, producing an intricate Gothic boss of extreme grace and quaintness, apparently arranged both with triumphant pleasure in the art of basket-making and with definite purpose of obtaining ornamental form."
Having led you on, he then wags a finger: "I fear there is no occasion to tell you that the bird had no purpose of the kind. I say that I fear this, because I would much rather have to undeceive you in attributing too much intellect to the lower animals, than too little." The bullfinch, he went on, has just enough emotion, science and art as are necessary for its happiness. The clematis twigs were lighter and tougher than others, and the beauty of the result was much more dependent on the blossoms than the bird, writes Ruskin. Then, the big leap: "Does it never occur to you, then, that to some of the best and wisest artists among ourselves, it may not always be possible to explain what pretty things they are making and that, perhaps, the very perfection of their art is in their knowing so little about it? Whether it has occurred to you or not, I assure you that it is so .. . And, assuredly, they have nothing like the delight in their own work which it gives to other people."
We have strayed far from the original questions put here a few days ago, but let us end for today on Ruskin's final line of thought: "Why should not our nests be as interesting things to angels, as bullfinches' nests are to us?" (Selections from the writings of John Ruskin, second series, 1860-1888. George Allen 1893.) Y