180 THE BUNTINGS 



sombre-suited bunting whose courtship is of an equally elaborate 

 kind ? The corn-bunting, it has now been seen, has also his courting 

 antics, but how different how far less specialised are they! This 

 difference, I believe, applies generally, and it is just that which, upon 

 the theory of sexual selection, rightly understood, might be expected. 

 Of the song of the male Lapland-bunting, Yon Homeyer, who 

 was so lucky as to hear it in such interesting connection with the 

 bird's nuptial activities, says nothing (at least in that particular paper) 

 except that it was loud, and excitedly uttered. There can be little 

 doubt, however, that the bird is a sweet singer. Naumann x speaks 

 of its "agreeable, unusual song, which seems made out of the lark's 

 and the linnet's," and adds that it soars, singing, like a lark, over its 

 nest. Wheelwright once better known as " The old Bushman " has 

 the following sympathetic passage in his A Spring and Summer in 

 Lapland : " The male," he says (while the hen is on the nest), " sits 

 on a stone or heap of earth, uttering a monotonous, plaintive whistle 

 very much resembling the call of the golden plover, but fainter 

 till disturbed, when he rises in the air, much after the manner of 

 the common bunting, soars for awhile, and then suddenly drops 

 down to the ground, as does the skylark into a field of young wheat, 

 at home. While in the air, the song is as rich and clear as that of 

 any of our songsters not so shrill as that of the lark, but far sweeter 

 and more varied, for, in this song, the clear, flute-like note of the 

 corn-bunting is blended with the varying strain of the skylark, and I 

 thought I never listened to a sweeter melody." Hagerup, another 

 eye and ear witness, is not quite so appreciative. He says : " The 

 song, which sounds best while the bird descends slowly, and without 

 flapping of wings, from on high, is but short, and of an extremely 

 melancholy nature, but containing very pretty warbling runs, which 

 are always repeated in the same order and in a comparatively slow 

 time." 2 As to " melancholy," one does not want a bird to sing jigs, 



1 Naturgeschichte der Vogel Mitteleiiropas. 



2 Birds of Greenland. 



