244 THE PLAY OF ANIMALS. 



ognition, is a powerful agent here; contact, too, plays 

 its part with most animals,* as well as the regular love 

 plays, such as dancing, flying, and singing. 



And since with these is connected the display of 

 brilliant colours and striking forms, the intensifying 

 of performances that were perhaps originally intended 

 to serve other purposes may help to overcome the female's 

 reluctance. 



In all this we have attempted to indicate the out- 

 lines of a view which would so transform the original 

 Darwinian principle that if fully carried out we should 

 have to consider it a new theory. Sexual selection 

 would then become a special case of natural selection. If 

 the point of departure for this idea be granted — namel}^, 

 that the excited condition necessary for pairing, and also 

 a certain difficulty in its execution, are both useful for 

 the preservation of the species — we find the whole series 

 of phenomena related to the subject so much more simply 

 and satisfactorily explained that no one, it seems to me, 

 can hesitate to decide in favour of the hypothesis. In- 

 stead of a conscious or unconscious choice, of which 

 we know nothing certain, we have the need of overcom- 

 ing instinctive coyness in the female, a fact familiar 

 enough, but hitherto not sufficiently accounted for. 

 Then the question is no longer which among many 

 males will be chosen by the female, but which one has 

 the qualities that can overcome the reluctance of the fe- 

 male whom he woos. How^ great a difference this is will 

 appear from the fact that in the well-founded opinion 

 of the ^liillers the choice itself, the betrothal of the 

 birds, as it were, takes place before the breeding time. 

 "Long before the springtime, with all its enticements 



* Cf. Espinas, Les Societes animales. 



