Finn's Experiments 



The second is that the human animal is not a 

 typical one. Husbands and wives are selected 

 for mental and moral qualities rather than 

 physical ones. The same may, of course, be to 

 some extent true of animals, but in these there 

 must of necessity be far less variation as regards 

 mental attributes. Moreover, the question of 

 income is much bound up with human matrimonial 

 alliances ; a rich man or woman has the same 

 advantage in selection as is possessed by an 

 animal endowed with more than the average 

 physical strength of its species. 



Finn adopted the plan of experiment suggested 

 by Prof. Moseley. His apparatus consisted of a 

 cage divided into three compartments by wire 

 partitions, so that a bird living in one of them 

 could see its neighbour in the next compartment. 

 In the middle compartment he placed a hen 

 Amadavat (Sporceginthus amandava), and in each 

 of the other compartments he put a cock bird. 

 Under such circumstances, the hen in the middle 

 compartment will sit and roost beside the cock 

 she prefers. The male amadavat, he writes, in 

 The Country-Side, vol. i. p. 142, "is in breeding 

 plumage red with white spots, and the hen brown. 

 The red varies in intensity even in full-plumaged 

 birds, and I submitted to the hen first of all two 

 male birds, one of a coppery and the other of a 

 rich scarlet tint. In no long time she had made 

 her choice of the latter bird ; the other, I am sorry 



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