2 30 BIRD LIFE GLIMPSES 



is on the way to becoming an ultimate end, instead 

 of only a proximate one. Intelligence would lapse 

 in such a process, but it might revive again, as I 

 believe, under the influence of natural selection. 

 I should record, however, in connection with the 

 above remarks, that at the end of the most violent 

 fight the bills of the birds became disengaged. It 

 then became more of a rough and tumble a TrayKpa- 

 TLOV between them, and I noticed that one did, 

 then, dart upon and peck the other, from behind. 

 In other cases, too, I have remarked that when 

 fighting birds once close and grapple, formality is 

 at an end. What has struck me as peculiar, is the 

 way in which they will not close, but seem content 

 to make, over and over again, certain movements 

 that have an oddly stereotyped and formal appear- 

 ance. Here, as it appears to me, we see the 

 hardening of the surface of the lava-stream, above 

 the molten fluid beneath. Through this cooled 

 crust the latter must be reached ; but the lava- 

 stream may become all crust, and the battle lose 

 itself in formality. 



The time during which I watched from my bush, 

 and in which all these doings were included, was about 

 four hours from 3, or thereabouts, to 7 namely 

 and during the whole of it, woodpeckers, when not 

 thus fighting, fed quietly upon the greensward, prob- 

 ing and hammering it with their bills for the ants. 

 What a terrible calamity to fall upon thousands of 

 such little intellectual entities ! Fancy the same 

 sort of thing happening to ourselves a monster, of 

 landscape proportions, trundling down London, say, 

 or Pekin, and englutting everybody philosophers 



