NEUTRAL ANTICS 193 



will be the best performers in this kind, and if these 

 be the males, then, whether they win the females by 

 their vigour, or whether the females choose them 

 for the result of it — their antics namely — in either 

 case these will increase. For my part, 1 believe that 

 the one sex will, generally, take an interest in what 

 the other does, which would lead to more and more 

 emulation, and more and more choice. Thus, how- 

 ever any antic may have originated, it seems to me 

 very probable that it will, ultimately, become a sexual 

 one, and it will then often be indistinguishable from 

 such as have been entirely sexual in their origin. 

 Examples of the latter would be, in my view, those 

 frenzied motions, springing from the violence of the 

 sexual passion, which, by their becoming pleasing to 

 the one sex, when indulged in by the other, have 

 been moulded, by this influence, into a conscious 

 display. Inasmuch, however, as, upon my suppo- 

 sition, almost any action can become an antic, and 

 as a long time may then elapse before it is employed 

 sexually, it is natural that we should find, amongst 

 birds, a number of antics which are not sexual ones, 

 and which neither add to, nor detract from, the 

 evidence for or against sexual selection. 



It "may be said that the snipes which I saw fight- 

 ing were only one pair. Still they were a pair of 

 snipes, and as representative, I suppose, as any other 

 pair of the same bird. No doubt there would be 

 degrees of efficiency and formality, but this would 

 not affect the general argument. Wherever, in 

 nature, any process is going on, some of the indi- 

 viduals of those species affected by it will be more 

 affected than others. 



