Habits and Instincts of the Pairing Season. 115 



couple, who receive him graciously, tread with him a 

 measured dance accompanied by resonant drumming 

 notes, and then bow him out, with their beaks bent to 

 the ground. He returns to his mate, with whom he will 

 himself receive a visitor later on. 



This keen and sympathetic observer of animal life is 

 not prepared to accept, and even rejects with some scorn, 

 the idea that the activities he so well describes have any 

 connection with preferential mating. " What relation," he 

 asks, " that we can see or imagine, to the passion of love 

 and the business of courtship have these dancing and 

 vocal performances in nine cases out of ten ? " One may 

 not unreasonably suppose, however, that the state of 

 emotional exaltation shown by such exuberant activity 

 bears some relation to the pairing impulse, which seems in 

 many cases to reach its maximum intensity at the same 

 time of year. But whether this relation, supposing it to 

 exist, be such as to lead to preferential mating, is un- 

 doubtedly a question which is open to discussion, and 

 stands in need of further evidence from direct observation, 

 which is by no means easy to obtain. Let us, for the 

 purposes of discussion, rule out preferential mating as in- 

 operative, and ask how the nature and origin of the activities 

 in question can be otherwise explained. " The explana- 

 tion I have to offer," says Mr. Hudson, " lies very much 

 on the surface, and is very simple indeed, and, like that 

 of Dr. Wallace with regard to colour and ornaments, covers 

 the whole of the facts. We see that the inferior animals, 

 when the conditions of life are favourable, are subject to 

 periodical fits of gladness, affecting them powerfully and 

 standing out in vivid contrast to their ordinary temper. 

 . . . Birds are more subject to this universal joyous 

 instinct than mammals, and there are times when some 

 species are constantly overflowing with it. . . . If all 



Q 



