BIRDS AND KISSING 211 



understand why, in so many species, the cock feeds 

 the hen, and this without any reference to whether 

 she is able or unable to feed herself. As the young 

 birds grow up in the nest, they resemble their parents 

 more and more, and it would be easier for the male 

 to confuse them with the female, and thus take to 

 feeding her too, or to transfer the habit from the 

 one to the other, than it would be for the female, 

 with a maternal instinct to guide her, to do the 

 same by the male. Yet this, too, would be possible, 

 and if, in any species, the female is accustomed to ft^d 

 the male also, I would account for it in a similar way. 

 This habit, on the part of the cock bird, has become, 

 in some cases, a part of his ordinary courting atten- 

 tions to the hen ; and here, I believe, we have the 

 true meaning of that billing, or " nebbing," as it is 

 called, which so many birds indulge in at this season. 

 This habit, with its grotesque resemblance to kissing, 

 has always struck me as both curious and interesting, 

 but one seldom, in works of ornithology, meets with 

 a reference to it, much less with any attempt to 

 explain its philosophy. Where birds, now, merely, 

 bill, they once, in my opinion, fed each other — or 

 the male fed the female — but pleasure came to be 

 experienced in the contact alone, and the passage 

 of food, which was never necessary, gradually became 

 obsolete. I think it by no means improbable that 

 our own kissing may have originated in much the 

 same way ; and that birds, when thus billing, expe- 

 rience the same sort of pleasure that we do, when we 

 kiss, must be obvious to any one who has watched 

 them. With pigeons, to go no further, the act is 

 simply an impassioned one. It would be strong 



