MARRIAGE 



CHAPTER X 



Esthetic Side of Love-making. Conjugal Responsibility 

 IN Birds. Monogamy v. Polygaiiy. Affinities in Birds 



APART FROM SEX. NESTING AGES. 



In all matters relating to domesticity, birds 

 would appear to stand far higher than mammals 

 in the scheme of nature. The male quadruped 

 has little or no sense of parental duty, and even 

 when he refrains from devouring his offspring, he 

 throws all the labour of home-building and of 

 rearing upon his heavily-tasked mate. In de- 

 fence of the young, it is almost invariably the 

 mother who offers her life to the enemy ; the lord 

 and master being usually engaged elsewhere on 

 matters of purely personal interest. Compare 

 this with the remarkable devotion of many of the 

 smaller birds — the willow-wren or long-tailed tit, 

 for example. For weeks the pair labour side by 

 side, providing every accommodation and com- 

 fort for the coming nestlings that forethought 

 can devise. Some idea of the extent of the 

 task resting upon the long-tailed tits, for example, 

 may be inferred from the fact that one nest alone 

 contained 2,379 separate feathers. The marital 

 and parental instinct of the male bird is a far 

 higher and more responsible feeling than that 

 seen to exist in the male mammal. In many 

 cases the cock takes an equal part in the duty 

 of incubation, and in almost all species, with the 



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