198 MUTTON BIRDS 



Some readers will have noted with surprise, 

 and some with pain, that the conduct of the male 

 Tit during the Cuckoo episode, stands forth in 

 no very noble light. Those who have done so 

 are thinking in terms of man and not of bird. 

 His concealment of himself in the thicket, we 

 should designate by such foolish words as 

 "cowardly," "unmanly," and "unchivalrous," 

 but the verdict of male Tits would consider that 

 his proceedings were wise, eminently proper, 

 and that he could not have acted otherwise and 

 yet done his duty. What man calls chivalry, the 

 feeling which, in Christian countries through a 

 reverence for the mother of God, has become 

 transferred to woman in general, and which 

 ordains that the male shall perish under all 

 circumstances to save the female, has no place 

 in the working of the minds of male animals. 

 If we can imagine in a community of Tits some 

 disaster analogous to that of insufficient boat 

 accommodation in a sinking liner, the male birds 

 would firstly save themselves, not for themselves, 

 but for the race, for their future broods. Senti- 

 ment is a luxury even to the wealthier and more 

 leisured class of mankind, the poor can hardly 

 afford it, and to the creatures of wood and wold 

 this is indeed a work-a-day world. It is this 

 hard or "horse sense" that makes a parent bird, 

 about to build again and rear another brood, 

 hustle and thrust out from its feeding grounds 

 the very creatures it would a few weeks ago 

 almost not quite, always the race comes first 

 have died for. The male especially, is thinking 

 already of his next family, and getting strong 

 not for himself or, if for himself, not selfishly, 

 but as agent for the race. 



