64 BIRD WATCHING 



spired "the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell," 

 and to-day influence priests or medicine-men amongst 

 savages (to go no farther), can be, and are, combined 

 with ordinary shrewd intelligence ; nor does it seem 

 too much to suppose that a bird that was always 

 seeing the effect of what it did when it, as it were, 

 fell into hysterics, should have come in time to reckon 

 upon the hysterics, to know what they were good 

 for, and even to some extent to direct them — as a 

 great actor in an emotional scene must govern himself 

 in the main, though, probably, a great deal of the 

 gesture, action, and facial expression is unconsciously 

 and spontaneously performed. 



Now, if we assume that these ruses employed by 

 birds for the protection of their young — as in the 

 case of the wild-duck — have commenced in purely 

 involuntary movements, without any proposed object, 

 the instance here given of the snipe may perhaps 

 throw some light upon their origin. A bird, whilst 

 incubating, and thus, hour after hour, doing violence 

 to its active and energetic disposition, is under the 

 influence of a strong force in opposition to and 

 overcoming the forces which usually govern it. Its 

 mental state may be supposed to be a highly- 

 wrought and tense one, and it therefore does not 

 seem surprising that some sudden surprise and 

 startle at such a time, by rousing a force opposite to 

 that under the control of which it then is, and pro- 

 ducing thereby a violent conflict, should throw it off 

 its mental balance and so produce something in the 

 nature of hysteria or convulsions. But let this once 

 take place with anything like frequency in the case 

 of any bird, and natural selection will begin to act. 



