The Sociable Weavers.
Men find it convenient to devote themselves to different trades. One spends his time in one trade, and another in another. So we find the various kinds of birds brought up and occupied in different trades. The woodpecker is a carpenter, the hawk a sportsman, the heron a fisherman, &c. But in these cases we remark, that the birds do not have to serve an apprenticeship. It takes a boy seven years to learn to be a carpenter; but a young woodpecker, as soon as he can fly, goes to his work without a single lesson, and yet understanding it perfectly.
This is very wonderful; but God teaches the birds their lessons, and his teaching is perfect. Perhaps the most curious mechanics among the birds, are the Sociable Weavers, found in the southern part of Africa. Hundreds of these birds, in one community, join to form a structure of interwoven grass, (the sort chosen being what is called Boshman’s grass,) containing various apartments, all covered by a sloping roof, impenetrable to the heaviest rain, and increased year by year, as the increase in numbers of the community may require.
“I observed,” says a traveller in South Africa, “a tree with an enormous nest of these birds, to which I have given the appellation of Republicans; and, as soon as I arrived at my camp, I despatched a few men with a wagon to bring it to me, that I might open the hive and examine the structure in its minutest parts. When it arrived, I cut it to pieces with a hatchet, and saw that the chief portion of the structure consisted of a mass of Boshman’s grass, without any mixture, but so compact and firmly basketed together as to be impenetrable to the rain. This is the commencement of the structure; and each bird builds its particular nest under this canopy, the upper surface remaining void, without, however, being useless; for, as it has a projecting rim and is a little inclined, it serves to let the water run off, and preserves each little dwelling from the rain.
“The largest nest that I examined was one of the most considerable I had anywhere seen in the course of my journey, and contained three hundred and twenty inhabited cells, which, supposing a male and female to each, would form a society of six hundred and forty individuals. Such a calculation, however, would not be exact. It appears, that in every flock the females are more numerous by far than the males; many cells, therefore, would contain only a single bird. Still, the aggregate would be considerable; and, when undisturbed, they might go on to increase, the structure increasing in a like ratio, till a storm, sweeping through the wood, laid the tree, and the edifice it sustained, in one common ruin.”