194 DIVERSIONS OF A NATURALIST 



secreted by special glands as attractions to the females 

 is frequent in the mammals — such as the musk-deer, 

 the musk-rat, the civet, and many common hoofed 

 animals, such as deer, antelopes, goats, and sheep — but 

 has not been noticed in birds, though known in butter- 

 flies and moths. It is in the use of the voice in singing 

 and in the special display of gorgeous plumage, grown, 

 so to speak, for the purpose at the breeding season, and 

 in strutting, fantastic posturing, and in dancing that the 

 male bird excels. Not all birds do all these things, and 

 female birds do none of them as a rule. 



I must break off for a moment here to warn the 

 reader that whilst we find it difficult not to speak of 

 these activities of the male bird and male animals 

 generally in the same terms as we speak of such 

 behaviours in human beings, there is yet a fundamental 

 difference between the two cases which is apt to be lost 

 sight of in consequence of the language used. When 

 the musk-deer and other mammals attract the female 

 by a scent, they have no consciousness or understanding 

 of what they are doing. They do not as a matter of 

 thought and intention produce their perfume any more 

 than the birds produce their gay breeding plumage 

 by " taking thought," or the stag his great antlers or 

 the boar his tusks. Man is, on the contrary, in these 

 matters, as in many others, ill-provided with natural 

 automatically-growing mechanisms of life-saving or race- 

 perpetuating importance. Though the behaviour of man 

 in courtship is singularly like that of many animals, he 

 has not inherited an automatically-produced bundle of 

 charms to allure the other sex. He has had to think 

 the matter out and to consciously and deliberately 

 " make " or procure from external sources both perfumes 

 and coloured decorations and arresting (often absurd and 



