ESTHETIC FEELING IN BIRDS. 651 



almost entirely of very simple sensuous factors. In order for a butter- 

 fly or a humming-bird to admire its gorgeously appareled mate, it is 

 not necessary that it should be capable of taking delight, like our- 

 selves, in a Claude or a Rubens ; it is enough that it should possess a 

 nervous organization pleasurably affected by certain forms and colors 

 in the same way as it is pleasurably affected by sweet fruits or the 

 nectar of flowers. Nothing more than this need be postulated in order 

 to establish the facts for which Mr. Darwin has contended with such 

 wealth of illustration in the second part of the " Descent of Man." 



It may be worth while, then, to examine a single large class of ani- 

 mals, in which the esthetic nature is highly developed, for the purpose 

 of discovering whether they do really afford proof of a sensibility to 

 form, color, or musical sound. It must be remembered that even in 

 our own race the sense of beauty in children, savages, and the uncul- 

 tured classes, hardly rises above this simple level. We must not, of 

 course, expect to find an appreciation of musical harmony, of imitative 

 pictorial skill, of elaborate ornamentation, among birds or insects. We 

 must be content if we see evidence of a love for red, blue, and yellow, 

 for sweet perfumes and pleasant flavors, for symmetrical forms and 

 simple patterns, for ringing notes and trilled resonances. The class of 

 birds probably shows external marks of such tastes in a higher degree 

 than any other ; and, though many of them have been set forth by 

 various writers elsewhere, it will perhaps repay the trouble to collect 

 them into a single paper in order to show their bearing upon the gen- 

 eral sesthetic sensibility of the class, as well as upon the specific ques- 

 tion of sexual selection. For this purpose I shall first take for granted 

 the fact of such selection, and afterward endeavor to justify it by 

 analogy from known human practice. 



Beginning with the lowest of the special senses, taste, we find 

 ample evidence that very many birds have a strong liking for sugar. 

 In confinement, canaries and parrots eagerly devour it in the manu- 

 factured form. In the wild state humming-birds, sun-birds, honey- 

 suckers, lories, and many other species, feed off the nectar of flowers, 

 more or less mixed with insects. Mr. Webber, an American naturalist, 

 found that the ruby-throats of the United States were attracted by a 

 cup of sirup, and numerous other birds display a strong liking for the 

 same mixture. Fruits, which have been developed especially to suit 

 the tastes of birds, almost always contain an abundance of sugary 

 juices ; while the kernels within their stones are generally bitter, so 

 as to prevent their winged allies from devouring the actual seed. 

 Hence we may infer that all the vast tribes of toucans, hornbills, 

 macaws, plantain-eaters, birds-of-paradise, and fruit-pigeons, possess 

 a taste for sugar sufficiently strong to have produced the separate 

 evolution of these sweet seed-coverings in a hundred different families 

 of plants throughout the whole world. Indeed, the strength of the 

 evidence thus afforded can not be overrated, when we remember that 



