262 THE BIRD WATCHER 
The brilliant mouth@vity can, of course, only be 
exhibited by the opening of the bill, and in doing 
this—in the particular way, and with the accompani- 
ments described in each case—both sexes act alike. 
In other words, if there is really a conscious display 
in the matter then each sex displays to the other. 
What conclusion are we to draw from this? Either, 
as it appears to me, we must assume that both the 
male and female equally strive to please one another, 
or that, while the actions of the male mean something, 
those of the female mean nothing, or nothing in 
particular, having been transmitted to her, through 
him, by those same laws of inheritance which have 
given her, in these and other cases, his own orna- 
mental plumage, and not in accordance with any 
principle by virtue of which she has been rendered 
more and more attractive to him. For, except in 
some special cases where the female is larger and 
handsomer than the male, the Darwinian theory does 
not suppose that the hen bird has been modified to 
please the taste of the cock, whose eagerness, it is 
assumed, has made this quite unnecessary. 
But any uniformly repeated action is a habit, and 
habits must bear a relation to the psychology of the 
being practising them, from which it would seem to 
follow that whatever be the mental state of the male 
bird through whom any habit has been transmitted to 
the female, such mental state, being the cause of such 
habit, must have been transmitted to her along with it. 
To suppose, however, that the female acts in a certain 
