122 SEXUAL SELECTION : BIEDS. Part IL 



liand, in effecting hybrid unions between the male 

 pheasant and common hens, Mr. Hewitt is convinced 

 that the pheasant invariably prefers the older birds. 

 He does not appear to be in the least influenced by 

 their colour, but " is most " capricious in his attach- 

 ments." ^^ From some inexplicable cause he shews the 

 most determined aversion to certain hens, which no 

 care on the part of the breeder can overcome. Some 

 hens, as Mr. Hewitt informs me, are quite unattractive 

 even to the males of their own species, so that they 

 may be kept with several cocks during a whole sea- 

 son, and not one egg out of forty or fifty will prove 

 fertile. On the other hand with the Lonir-tailed duck 

 {Harelda glacialis), " it has been remarked," says 

 M. Ekstrom, "that certain females are much more 

 '•' courted than the rest. Frequently, indeed, one sees 

 '* an individual surrounded by six or eight amorous 

 *' males." Whether this statement is credible, I know 

 not ; but the native sportsmen shoot these females in 

 order to stuff them as decovs.^*^ 



With respect to female birds feeling a preference for 

 particular males, we must bear in mind that we can 

 judge of choice being exerted, only by placing our- 

 selves in imagination in the same position. If an 

 inhabitant of another planet were to behold a number 

 of young rustics at a fair, courting and quarrelling 

 over a pretty girl, like birds at one of their places of 

 assemblage, he would be able to infer that she had the 

 power of choice only by observing the eagerness of the 

 wooers to please her, and to display their finery. Now 

 with birds, the evidence stands thus ; they have acute 

 powers of observation, and they seem to have some 



-9 I^Ir. Hewitt, quoted in ' Tegetmeier's Poultry Book,' 1866, p. 1G5. 

 2f* Quoted in Lloyd's ' Game Birds of Sweden,' p. 345, 



