IN THE SHETLANDS 273 
hour she forgot her old partner. Winter passed by, 
and the next spring the pintail seemed to have become 
a convert to her blandishments, for they nested and 
produced seven or eight young ones” (p. 415). 
(Here, then, we have a male as coy as a female, who 
is wooed and ultimately won.) Again: “ With one 
of the vultures (Cathartes aura) of the United States, 
parties of eight, ten, or more males and females 
assemble on fallen logs, exhibiting the strongest desire 
to please mutually” (p. 418). (Audubon, I think, is 
here quoted.) Again: “On the other hand, Mr. 
Harrison Weir has himself observed, and has heard 
from several breeders, that a female pigeon will 
occasionally take a strong fancy for a particular male, 
and will desert her own mate for him. Some females, 
according to another experienced observer, Riedel, 
are of a profligate disposition, and prefer almost any 
stranger to their own mate” (pp. 418-419). I myself 
had once a pigeon of this feather, and so marked was 
her personality, and really and strangely profligate her 
acts, that I have never forgotten her. Again we have: 
“<Sir R. Heron states that the hens have frequently 
great preference to a particular peacock. They were 
all so fond of an old pied cock that one year, when 
he was confined, though still in view, they were con- 
stantly assembled close to the trellis-walls of his prison, 
and would not suffer a japaned peacock to touch them. 
On his being let out in the autumn, the oldest of the 
hens instantly courted him, and was successful in her 
courtship. The next year he was shut up in a stable, 
4) 
