52 SEXUAL SELECTION : BIRDS. Part IL 



ever, of most birds and various strange cries are chiefly 

 uttered during the breeding-season, and serve as a 

 charm, or merely as a call-note, to the other sex. 



Naturalists are much divided with respect to the object 



of the singing of birds. Few more careful observers ever 



lived than Montagu, and he maintained that the " males 



" of song-birds and of many others do not in general 



" search for the female, but, on the contrary, their 



" business in the spring is to perch on some conspicuous 



" spot breathing out their full and amorous notes, which, 



'' by instinct, the female knows, and repairs to the spot to 



" choose her mate."^^ Mr. Jenner Weir informs me that 



this is certainly the case with the nightingale. Bech- 



stein, who kept birds during his whole life, asserts, " that 



" the female canary always chooses the best singer, and 



" that in a state of nature the female finch selects that 



" male out of a hundred whose notes please her most."^^ 



There can be no doubt that birds closely attend to 



each other's song. Mr. Weir has told me of the case of 



a bullfinch which had been taught to pipe a German 



waltz, and who was so good a performer that he cost 



ten guineas ; when this bird was first introduced into 



a room where other birds were kept and he began to 



sing, all the others, consisting of about twenty linnets 



and canaries, ranged themselves on the nearest side of 



their cages, and listened with the greatest interest to 



the new performer. Many naturalists believe that the 



singing of birds is almost exclusively " the effect of ri- 



" valry and emulation," and not for the sake of charming 



their mates. This was the opinion of Daines Barrington 



and White of Selborne, who both especially attended to 



2"»' Ornithological Dictionary,' 1833, p. 475. 



28 ' Naturgeschiohte der Stubenvogel,' 1840, s. 4. Mr. Harrison Weir 

 likewise writes to me : — " I am informed that the best singing males 

 " generally get a mate first when they are bred in the same room." 



