No. 1.] SEXUAL SELECTION IN SPIDERS. 7 



creates no alarm.' The beautifully coloured Thaumastura Cora 

 'rarely permits any other humming-bird to remain in its 

 neighborhood, but wages a continual and terrible war upon 

 them.' The magnificent bar-tail, Gometes sparganurus, one oi the 

 most imposing of all the humming-birds, is extremely fierce 

 and i^ugnacious, 'the males chasing each other through the 

 air with surprising perseverance and acrimony.' These are all 

 the species I find noticed as being especially pugnacious, and 

 every one of them is exceptionally colored or ornamented ; 

 while not one of the small, plain, and less ornamental species 

 are so described, although many of them are common and well 

 observed species."^ 



Here we have six species of humming-birds, given as all 

 that are noticed as especially pugnacious, to establish the wide 

 generalization that there is a causal relation between high vital 

 activity, as shown by fierceness and pugnacity, and brilliancy 

 of coloring, in the family Trochilidee, containing 118 genera and 

 390 species, of which 340 are brightly colored.^ 



The large family of pigeons gives evidence that makes 

 strongly against the theory. Many of them are conspicuously 

 colored — indeed Mr. Wallace remarks, " in the Malay Archi- 

 pelago and Pacific islands, they occur in such profusion and 

 present such singular forms and brilliant colors that they are 

 sure to attract attention. Here we find the extensive group of 

 fruit-pigeons, which, in their general green colors, adorned with 

 patches and bands of purple, white, blue, or orange, almost rival 

 the parrot tribe ; while the golden-green Nicobar pigeon, the great 

 crowned pigeons of New Guinea as large as turkeys, and the 

 golden-yellow fruit-dove of the Fijis, can hardly be surpassed 

 lor beauty." ' If the high vitality of the humming-birds will 



1 Tropical Nature, pp. 213, 214. 



2 Balrd, Brewer and Kidgway, N. A. Birds, say that about fifty species are 

 plainly colored, 



3 Loc. cit. p. 103. All the pigeons build open nests and the males take part in 

 incubation, tn the case of the humming-birds, which also build open nests, Wallace 

 has abandoned, in part, the factor of protection to the female during incubation, 

 since, in a number of the most beautiful species, the sexes are alike, and, as Darwin 

 says, " In the majority the females, though less brilliant than the males, are brightly 



