94 THE FINCHES 



a swift upward, as before with a swift downward, sweep, shoot to their 

 sylvan banks again, and are out of sight. 1 



But this, however exquisite, can hardly be called a display ; 

 a mutual expansion one may term it, rather, without arriere-pensee, 

 and only unconsciously lovely. It is after another fashion that the 

 male, as wooer, plays his own proper role. For this he is well 

 fitted. In coloration, the male greenfinch may a little excel 

 him ; still he is more varied and his figure daintier also he 

 wears shoulder-knots, which Chloris does not. This last, perhaps, 

 is the root of the matter with those most concerned in it ; yet still 

 Coelebs' breast, if not resplendent, is quite satisfactory, so that, his 

 carriage being less upright than is that of some others of the family 

 Pyrrhula, for instance, as well as Chloris it has interested me to 

 see him dilating on this theme, to the female, from a spray some- 

 thing above her, in the hawthorn where both were domiciled. She 

 must thus have had a very fine view of it, nor did the snow-white, 

 gleaming patches on the wings, before alluded to, suffer in the least, 

 they being made to play a part even beyond that of the other. 



Shoulder-knots indeed (for such I call them) are the chaffinch's 

 chief glory, and were they to fall out of fashion he would be quite lost. 

 His method with them is a little to expand the wings, by which they 

 become fuller, bending, as he does so, if his position make it advisable, 

 both forward and downward, singing all the while most vociferously, 

 moving his wings, expanding his tail, and twitching and jerking him- 

 self about in such a tense, high-wrought state of excitement, that he 

 may almost be said to dance upon the spray. These patches, in fact, 

 are very fine ornaments, and, though only white, are so bright and 

 glancing that they look almost like silver, sometimes, when the sun 

 shines on them. Sometimes too they are so large, and the feathers 

 forming them so thick and matlike, that, when thus displayed, they 

 have the appearance of two oval, or almost round, bosses, projecting 

 noticeably beyond the general surface of the plumage. But there are 



1 See Witchell's interesting observations, recorded in the Zoologist for May 1898. 



