THE BUNTINGS 175 



in his attire, and would thus help to illustrate that general principle, 

 upon which, the less a bird has to show, the less pains he takes to 

 show it. Still, the plainest bird has its feelings, and it is, as I believe, 

 out of the aimless and chaotic movements produced by these, that 

 the most elaborate and methodical displays have been gradually 

 shaped and perfected through the agency of sexual selection. Just 

 as colours and patterns of unsurpassed beauty and elegance have 

 appeared out of primitive drabs or browns, 1 so must springs, jerks, 

 rollings, and various uncouth, rigid actions, have been the raw material 

 of effective pose, or measured, pompous " dance." Let us then look 

 at the corn-bunting with a discerning eye, and see if he have not an 

 antic or two, to show us, even though they may not be true courting 

 ones, though, as to this, further evidence is required. 



The corn-bunting, then, when, time after time, he gives vent to 

 that little insignificant song of his, of which so much has been said 

 (and made), does not, with that, quite exhaust his capacities. Actions 

 which, even if there be no arritre pensee in them, bear yet the un- 

 mistakable stamp of the class to which they belong, either accompany 

 it, or, more often, are indulged in during the intervals of its utterance. 

 The wings, for instance, are drooped or held hanging, the throat 

 swelled, and the feathers, generally, puffed out in a noticeable manner. 

 Then, all at once, if the bird be on the ground, which perhaps was 

 more commonly his habit before telegraph-wires were invented, he 

 will make a little run, in this fashion, and, upon stopping, again so 

 comport himself; 2 or from the wire aforesaid, or else, and more 

 often, from the top of some lonely hawthorn-bush, in a wide, waste 



1 How, without some precedent power of aesthetic perception, were the first slight shades 

 of colour selected, accumulated, and intensified? Some may hold, now, that birds became 

 bright all at once, but why then do we find, at the present day, such a gradual crescendo from 

 the plain to the brilliant, first in the various species, and then in the plumage of the individual 

 bird, as e.g. the " eye" of the peacock's feather? Why, too, do the various plain or moderately 

 gay-coloured birds that we are familiar with, never assume, on a sudden, the far richer hues of 

 some other ones parrots, for instance, or humming-birds ? Moreover, in some birds e.g. the 

 argus pheasant we have great beaiity, with little or no coloration. Want of colour must not 

 be confounded with ugliness, which, except as a deviation from an accustomed standard, is 

 a non-existent factor in nature. 



2 Xaumann, op. cit. 



