50 A NATURALIST IN BORNEO 



poured out in an almost unceasing flow for several 

 minutes ; instinct with a gladsome vitality, it infects the 

 sympathetic listener and vividly suggests the luxuriant 

 wealth of tropical life. 



Copsychus saularis is one of the commonest Bornean 

 birds ; it frequents the lawns and shrubberies of gar- 

 dens, and is as familiar to the English exile as the 

 House-Sparrow is to his stay-at-home fellow country- 

 man. It is a black-and-white species, about as large 

 as a Blackbird, to which it is more nearly related than 

 it is to the Robin. In the evening this bird used to 

 assemble in small numbers on the gravel path outside 

 my house, and the males would indulge in what I can 

 only call singing contests. One or two would begin 

 the performance by spreading out the wings and tail 

 and depressing them, so that they touched the ground ; 

 the head was raised and thrown back, and in this pos- 

 ture the birds would scuttle about the path singing 

 loudly all the time ; then they would stop and two or 

 three others would repeat the manoeuvre. I never saw 

 any hen-birds in these assemblages of males, which 

 apparently indulge in the contests out of sheer exuber- 

 ance of spirits, and not with the idea of attracting the 

 females. 



Mr. F. M. Chapman, in his Camps and Cruises of an 

 Ornithologist^ records of the Prairie-Cock of Nebraska 

 displays and fights of the male birds which are un- 

 witnessed by the hens, and, if my memory serves me, 

 Mr. Edmund Selous has observed much the same thing 

 of the European Blackcock. Mr. Chapman writes : 

 " Probably we may regard these exhibitions as the 

 uncontrollable manifestations of that physical energy 

 which in animals reaches its extreme developmen 



