TOURNAMENTS AND BALLS 307 



The play of adult birds leads naturally to their 

 " balls " and tournaments, which, though un- 

 doubtedly connected with matrimonial arrange- 

 ments, have yet very much the character of assem- 

 blages for amusement ; in many cases, as in 

 Blackcock dances, a great amount of fighting goes 

 on with little real damage, although the more 

 solitary Capercailzie really mauls his opponent 

 savagely. The fights of Ruffs, also, do no more 

 harm than a glove-fight, and although Peafowl and 

 Mandarin Ducks, judging from their habits in 

 captivity, like to assemble for display, there seems 

 to be little real fighting among them ; in the case 

 of the " beauty shows " of the latter, which I 

 have often observed in the evening at the Zoo, it 

 always seemed to me that the birds were all paired 

 already, and came together on land, be it noted 

 night after night simply for the fun of the thing, 

 although the ducks did their best to incite the 

 drakes to hustle each other. 



It seems as if there is a tendency in highly 

 evolved species, however courageous, to leave off 

 fighting and concentrate on display, and in the 

 well-known case of the Bower-birds of Australasia 

 (Ptilonorbynckina) the play-place is actually laid 

 out and in many cases decorated by the birds. It 

 is to be noted that these extraordinary developments 

 of bird instinct have occurred in a continent where 

 man was, till we developed it, rare and at a low 

 level, which, taken into consideration along with 

 the human attributes so often noticeable in the 



