THE FINCHES 95 



birds and birds, in this respect, and I have been so struck with indi- 

 viduals, especially one who looked as though two very large flakes of 

 snow had fallen symmetrically upon him (it was May, indeed, and 

 East Anglia, yet not snowing), that I believe, in some cases, shoulder- 

 knots as has happened before, 1 and like other such rages must be 

 carried to an extreme. 



But if the shoulder-knots of the chaffinch are worth the showing, 

 those of the goldfinch, being what his name implies them to be not 

 silver, merely, but gold are even more so. With him too they are 

 his chief glory, even surpassing, in the effect they produce, that rich 

 small patch of crimson-lake that burns upon his forehead, cheeks, and 

 throat that little hood, or half-hood, it looks like, through which the 

 front part of the face is so almost comically thrust for, indeed, the 

 bird seems rather to have put it on separately than to wear it as part 

 of his own feathering ; it is so sharply defined, and goes such a little 

 way back, that the eye the human eye almost misses something, 

 almost cries out for more. This perhaps and it may be here 

 remarked that the very theory of gradually increasing adornment, in 

 the male bird, frees us from the necessity of thinking each successive 

 stage of it perfect gives the preference to the rich, sunny sheen of 

 the wings, with which view the bird's own actions, when he woos the 

 hen, seem to accord ; 2 for, standing before her, with wings a little 

 spread on the large, high bough of an elm, perhaps, and here the 

 pair may make their nest he alternately flashes in her admiring eyes 

 first one and then another of these golden lures, turning himself, to do 

 it, from side to side, so swiftly that he seems rather to sway than to 

 bend, till, coming nearer, and growing more and more excited, with 

 glint on glint he makes the air an aureole about her, and almost sets 

 his Danae in a shower of gold. And so she yields, assuming always 

 that there is no obstacle, and that the pliant hour has been taken, for 

 with finches too even with goldfinches it is not always that the 



1 See Swift : " This fellow has no soul, where are his shoulder-knots ? " 



2 Jenner Weir, as referred to by Darwin in the Descent of Man. 



