In the nest-building propensity of the social insects the biologist can recognize the first germ of the instinctive desire for the establishment of a permanent home. Certain birds, like the weaver-thrush of the tropics, imitate the community life of the ant and bee, but in all higher animals the homestead instinct is associated with the desire for domestic privacy. The eagle will suffer no other bird to approach the rock that shelters his eyrie; the hawk, the heron, and the kingfisher rear their brood at the greatest possible distance from the nesting-place of their next relatives. Each pair of squirrels try to get a tree all to themselves; and even the social prairie-dog shares its home with strangers (owls and serpents) rather than with another family of its own tribe. The “homestead instinct” of our primitive forefathers formed the first, and perhaps the most potent, stimulus to the acquisition of personal property. There is a period in life when the desire for the possession of a private domicile asserts itself with the power almost of a vital passion; and success in the realization of that desire solves in many respects the chief problems of individual existence. The love of domestic peace, the delight in the improvement of a private homestead, are the best guarantees of staid habits. There was a time when the neglect of husbandry was considered a conclusive proof of profligate habits; and the office of a Roman censor comprised the duty of reproving careless housekeepers. The poorest citizen of the Roman commonwealth had a little patrimonium of his own, a dwelling-house, an orchard, and a small lot of land, which he did his best to improve, and where his children learned their first lesson of personal rights in defense of their private playgrounds.