150 CHARLES DARWIN 



with the special season for the selection of mates. In 

 the spring, as even our poets have told us, the wanton 

 lapwing gets himself another crest. The law of battle 

 produces the spur of the game-birds and the still 

 stranger wing-spurs of certain species of the plover 

 kind. ./Esthetic rivalry is answerable rather for vocal 

 music, and for the plumage of the umbrella-bird, the 

 lyre-bird, the humming-birds, and the cock of the rocks. 

 Among mammals, strength rather than beauty seems 

 to have carried the day ; horns, and tusks, and spikes, 

 and antlers are here the special guerdon of the victorious 

 males. Yet even mammals show occasional signs of 

 distinctly gesthetic and artistic preferences, as in the 

 gracefully twisted horns of the koodoo, the scent-glands 

 of the musk-deer or of certain antelopes, the brilliant 

 hues of the male mandrill, and the tufts and moustaches 

 of so many monkeys. 



It must be frankly conceded that the reception 

 accorded to Darwin's doctrine of sexual selection, even 

 among the biological public, was far less unanimous, 

 enthusiastic, and full than that which had been granted 

 to his more extensive theory of survival of the fittest. 

 Many eminent naturalists declined from the very outset 

 to accept the conclusions thus definitely set before them, 

 and others who at first seemed disposed to bow to the 

 immense weight of Darwin's supreme authority gradually 

 withdrew their grudging assent from the new doctrine, 

 as they found their relapse backed up by others, and 

 refused to believe that the theory of courtship had been 

 fairly proven before the final tribunal of science. Several 

 critic began by objecting that the whole theory was a 

 mere afterthought. Darwin, they said, finding that 



