406 THE DESCENT OF MAN. 



cases prolonged and tedious, so it occasionally happens that 

 certain males and females do not succeed, during the proper 

 season, in exciting each others love, and consequently do 

 not pair ? This suspicion will appear somewhat less improba- 

 ble after we have seen what strong antipathies and prefer- 

 ences female birds occasionally evince toward particular 

 males. 



Mental Qualities of Birds and Tlieir Taste for the 

 Beautiful. Before we further discuss the question whether 

 the females select the more attractive males or accept the 

 first whom they may encounter, it will be advisable briefly 

 to consider the mental powers of birds. Their reason is 

 generally, and perhaps justly, ranked as low; yet some facts 

 could be given* leading to an opposite conclusion. Low 

 powers of reasoning, however, are compatible, as we see 

 with mankind, with strong affections, acute perception, 

 and a taste for the beautiful; and it is with these latter 

 qualities that we are here concerned. It has often been 

 said that parrots become so deeply attached to each other 

 that when one dies the other pines for a long time; but 

 Mr. Jenner Weir thinks that with most birds the strength 

 of their affection has been much exaggerated. Neverthe- 

 less, when one of a pair in a state of nature has been shot, 

 the survivor has been heard for days afterward uttering a 

 plaintive call: and Mr. St. John gives various facts proving 

 the attachment of mated birds, f Mr. Bennett relates J that 

 in China after a drake of the beautiful mandarin teal had 

 been stolen the duck remained disconsolate, though sedu- 

 lously courted by another mandarin drake, who displayed 



* I am indebted to Prof. Newton for the following passage from 

 Mr. Adam's " Travels of a Naturalist," 1870, p. 278. Speaking of 

 Japanese nut-batches in confinement, he says: " Instead of ihe more 

 yielding fruit of the yew, which is the ususl food of the nut-hatch 

 of Japan, at one time I substituted hard hazel-nuts. As the bird 

 was unable to crack them, he placed them one by one in his water- 

 glass, evidently with the notion that they would in time become 

 softer an interesting proof of intelligence on the part of these 

 birds." 



t" A Tour in Sutherlandshire," vol. i, 1849, p. 185. Dr. Buller 

 says ("Birds of New Zealand," 1872, p. 56) that a male King Lory 

 was killed; and the female " fretted and moped, refused her food, 

 and died of a broken heart." 



J " Wanderings in New South Wales," vol. ii, 1834, p. 62. 



