COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE. 479 



there seems to be nothing lacking on the part of the male, 

 whose qualifications as a suitor, and whose mode of paying 

 his court, exhibit nothing that can reasonably be objected to. 

 Nevertheless, the female * will not when she may ; ' and her 

 declinature can only be ascribed to caprice to some causeless 

 antipathy to the suitor, or to some equally unaccountable pre- 

 ference for an indifferent, non-competing stranger. 



Hence it happens that, in other animals as in man, the 

 course of ' true love ' does not always run smoothly. There 

 is no accounting for the love vagaries of the female, who 

 sometimes pays the penalty of old-maidism for her capricious 

 rejection of eligible offers of mates. For the same reason 

 the caprice of the female bachelorhood is sometimes com- 

 pulsorily inflicted on the male. As in man, bachelorhood and 

 old-maidism may arise from unattractiveness in either sex, 

 from incapacity in the one to charm the other. 



The delays and vagaries of love frequently arise from . 

 fastidiousness on the part of the female. There is difficulty, 

 perhaps impossibility, in pleasing her ; and this may not be 

 confined to lovers or mates, but may extend to food, home, 

 associates, master, and ' things in general.' This fastidious- 

 ness has been specially noticed in the bitch (Walsh) ; but in . 

 her and other female animals it is frequently, at least, to be 

 regarded as morbid. As a cause of love-delays or errors, 

 it is, however, intelligible. But caprice often defies all 

 attempts to understand or account for it. And it is far from 

 being confined to love affairs, extending also, as it does, to 

 nesting places for instance, in the martin (White) to 

 friendship, and to many other of the ordinary affairs of life. 

 Whether or not it is more common, it has certainly been, like 

 fastidiousness, much more commonly noted, in the female 

 than the male ; and the presumption is that in the one case, 

 as in the other, it is to be regarded as a morbid peculiarity of 

 the female. 



But celibacy, neither in female nor male, is always thus 

 compulsory or fortuitous. It would appear, in some cases at 

 least, to be voluntary and deliberate in the case, for in- 

 stance, where obstacles arise to the gratification of a special 

 choice. 



