BIRDS. 431 



been improved into a melodious love-song. In the case of 

 the modified feathers, by which the drumming, whistling, 

 or roaring noises are produced, we know that some 

 birds during their courtship flutter, shake, or rattle 

 their unmodified feathers together; and if the females were 

 led to select the best performers, the males which possessed 

 the strongest or thickest, or most attenuated feathers, 

 situated on any part of the body, would be the most suc- 

 cessful; and thus by slow degrees the feathers might be 

 modified to almost any extent. The females, of course, 

 would not notice each slight successive alteration in shape, 

 but only the sounds thus produced. It is a curious fact 

 that in the same class of animals, sounds so different as the 

 drumming of the snipe's tail, the tapping of the wood- 

 pecker's beak, the harsh trumpet-like cry of certain Avater- 

 fowl, the cooing of the turtle-dove, and the song of the 

 nightingale, should all be pleasing to the females of the 

 several species. But we must not judge of the tastes of 

 distinct species by a uniform standard; nor must we judge 

 by the standard of man's taste. Even with man, we should 

 remember what discordant noises, the beating of tomtoms 

 and the shrill notes of reeds, please the ears of savages. 

 Sir S. Baker remarks,* that ^' as the stomach of the Arab 

 prefers the raw meat and reeking liver taken hot from the 

 animal, so does his ear prefer his equally coarse and dis- 

 cordant music to all other.'' 



Love Antics and Dances. The curious love gestures of 

 some birds have already been incidentally noticed; 8o 

 that little need here be added. In Xorthern Amer- 

 ica large numbers of a grouse, the Tetrao phasianellus, 

 meet every morning during the breeding-season on 

 a selected level spot, and here they run round and 

 round in a circle of about fifteen or twenty feet in diam- 

 eter, so that the ground is worn quite bare, like a fairy- 

 ring. In these partridge-dances, as they are called by the 

 hunters, the birds assume the strangest attitudes, and run 

 round, some to the left and some to the right. Audu- 

 bon describes the males of a heron (Ardea Jiero- 

 dias) as walking about on their long legs with 

 great dignity before the females, bidding defiance to 



* " The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia," 1867, p. 203. 



