54 DISPOSITION TO SECURE A TERRITORY 



movements to an acre of ground at the com- 

 pletion of their long journey, they are acting no 

 more under the influence of fatigue than the 

 Cuckoo, which keeps within certain bounds yet 

 flies about briskly, or the God wit which, though 

 holding to its few square yards on the ground, 

 executes most tiring and extensive flights above 

 the marsh. 



Of all the migrants, however, the behaviour 

 of the Ruff is perhaps the most strange, and 

 though it has long been known that these birds 

 have their special meeting places where they 

 perform antics and engage in serious strife, yet 

 it is only within recent years that the primary 

 purpose of these gatherings has been ascertained 

 that purpose being the actual discharge of 

 the sexual function. Mr Edmund Selous has 

 carried out some exhaustive investigations into 

 their activities at the meeting places, and he 

 makes it clear that each bird has its allotted 

 position. He says, for example, that " It begins 

 to look as though different birds had little 

 seraglios of their own in different parts of the 

 ground," that " each Ruff has certainly a place 

 of its own," or again that "this Ruff indeed, 

 which I think must be a tender-foot, does not 

 seem to have a place of its own like the others." 

 Nevertheless it is only at the meeting places 

 that they have their special positions ; there is 

 no evidence to show that each one has a special 

 territory, wherein it seeks its food, as the 

 Warbler has, and therefore some may think that 

 we are here confronted with behaviour of a 



