THE PLAY OF ANIMALS. 245 



to love, the young birds have chosen their mates, unseen 

 by any but the closest observers. It is a common mis- 

 take to suppose that the marriage bond is first assumed 

 in spring. Rather to this time belongs the male's first 

 solicitations for his mate's consent to sexual union, and 

 this has been falsely called pairing." * If this opin- 

 ion, so emphatically expressed, is correct, the explanation 

 of the phenomena of courtship by means of conscious or 

 unconscious choice is irretrievably damaged. Our view, 

 on the contrary, would be in perfect accord with it, 

 whether there had been a previous choice or none at all. 

 Eeproduction would be assured to the male who pos- 

 sessed the qualities and capacities necessary to conquer 

 the instinctive reluctance of the mate. 



This explains, too, why the dallying of birds that 

 have lived in wedlock for a long time is repeated year 

 after year, and indeed much oftener, although there can 

 certainly be no further selection by the female, f And, 

 finally, our hypothesis applies equally well to plays 

 by masses and whole flocks together, and to those cases 

 where the female takes part in the flying and singing, 

 which present great difficulty to the Darwinian theory, 

 and yet it does not preclude the possibility of a con- 

 scious or unconscious choice in Darwin's sense. 



Before going on to the second part of our subject, 

 I wish to notice the common objection that what we call 

 the arts of courtship are frequently practised at other 

 times. 



This objection is expressed most clearly by Spencer, 



* A. and K. Miiller, Thiere der Heimath, i, p. 4. 



t The zooloijist H. E. Zie^ler says, in a notice of this book : 

 " This circumstance favours the author's view, for there could 

 hardly be sexual selection in such cases, but rather excitation 

 only." 



