454 THE DESCENT OF MAN, 



velous fact that she should possess this almost human degree 

 of taste. He who tliinks that he can safely gauge the dis- 

 crimination and taste of the lower animals may deny that 

 the female Argus pheasant can appreciate such refined 

 beauty; but he will then be compelled to admit that the 

 extraordinary attitudes assumed by the male during the act 

 of courtship, by which the wonderful beauty of his plum- 

 age is fully displayed, are purposeless; and this is a conclu- 

 sion which I for one will never admit. 



Although so many pheasants and allied gallinaceous 

 birds carefully display their phimage before the females, it 

 is remarkable, as Mr. Bartlett informs me, that this is not 

 the case with the dull colored eared and cheer pheasants 

 {Crossoptilon auritum and Fhasianus wallichii); so that 

 these birds seem conscious that they have little beauty to 

 display. Mr. Bartlett has never seen the males of either of 

 these species fighting together, though he has not had such 

 good opportunities for observing the cheer as the eared 

 pheasant. Mr. Jenner Weir, also, finds that all male 

 birds with rich or strongly-characterized plumage are more 

 quarrelsome than the dull-colored species belonging to the 

 same groups. The goldfinch, for instance, is far more 

 pugnacious than the linnet, and the blackbird than the 

 thrush. Those birds which undergo a seasonal change of 

 plumage likewise become much more pugnacious at the 

 period when they are most gayly ornamented. No doubt 

 the males of some obscurely colored birds fight desperately 

 together, but it appears that when sexual selection has 

 been highly influential, and has given bright colors to the 

 males of any species, it has also very often given a strong 

 tendency to pugnacity. We shall meet with nearly analo- 

 gous cases when we treat of mammals. On the other hand, 

 with birds the power of song and brilliant colors have 

 rarely been both acquired by the males of the same species; 

 but in this case the advantage gained would have been the 

 same, namely, success in charming the female. Neverthe- 

 less it must be owned that the males of several brilliantly 

 colored birds have had their feathers specially modified for 

 the sake of producing instrumental music, though the 

 beauty of this cannot be compared, at least according to 

 our taste, with that of the vocal music of many songsters. 



We will now turn to male birds which are not orna- 

 mented in any high degree, but which nevertheless display 



