200 THE BIRD WATCHER 
have been land-bird@once— bathing, as a special 
activity, is not so necessary to it there as it was on 
the land. Being always in the bath, it needs not to 
specially bathe, or, always bathing, it wants no special 
bath. It finds itself, however, with an inherited habit 
which it is impelled to continue ; but as the constant 
sensation of being in the water weakens the desire, as 
the fact of being there does the necessity, for special 
ablutions, this energy becomes gradually less governed, 
and its direction less fixed. The movements being 
no longer limited to the purpose in which they origi- 
nated, or exclusively shaped by it, grow more violent, 
and corporeal activity producing mental excitement, 
which again reacts upon the former, this violence tends 
to increase. The result is a mad sort of romp, or 
play, more or less boisterous in proportion to the 
greater or less vitality of the bird, or its quieter or 
livelier disposition, which perhaps is the same thing ; 
and when we have this we have what, in bird life, is 
called an antic. To generalise it, this antic will be 
due to the continuance of an energy once directed to 
a special purpose, but which is now no longer so, or 
not exclusively ; and this, I believe, has been one of 
the principal paths along which antics have been 
evolved. 
I can, I think, see another reason why the bathing 
of aquatic birds has passed, as I believe it has in 
several instances, into an antic or something partaking 
of that character. They bathe in their own element— 
water—in which they are thoroughly at home, whilst 
