Correspondence. 335


SEXUAL SELECTION IN BIRDS.


Sir,—M r. Pocock’s interesting article in our August number prompts

me to offer a few remarks in answer, or in supplement. There should be

no difficulty in reconciling Darwin’s theory—that ornaments in male birds

have become developed through selection by the females—with the generally

observed indifference the female shows to the courtship display of the male.

Darwin’s theory need not and cannot be taken as the only and final ex¬

planation of ornamental development. Otherwise, one might ask, has no

selection been allowed the males, and is the uniformly sober garb of the

hens the expression of the male taste in mating? The necessity of being

beautiful and the striving towards beauty which all facts in Nature underlie

is nowhere more marked than in the form and colour of birds.


“ If eyes were made for seeing,


Then beauty is its own excuse for being.”


Female preference would seem only an assistant factor, not the

primary cause, of the end in view; other causes act and react. The most

beautiful males are probably also the most vigorous; hence the most likely

to drive off rivals and to emphasize their points on their progeny in the

long run.


The objection that sometimes a more beautiful male is observed to be

rejected in favour of a less beautiful one, might be met by the reminder

that the brightest coloured individuals of a species are invariably old males,

which conceivably might not always be the most tireless in the strenuous

competition for the hens, and so may, on occasion, get left behind. This

would be the rule-proving exception.


It seems more than probable that the indifference of the hens to the

display of the cocks is only a seeming one—Mr. Pocock admits the possi¬

bility of this. Beyond the fact that throughout the animal kingdom, in the

drama of pairing, an active role is assigned the male, a passive role the

female, there is another premiss, namely, that the former’s part is essentially

objective, the latter’s subjective. Allow for female coyness, another natural

phenomenon, and the indifference becomes transparent.


Will not Mr. Pocock’s difficulty, that birds as well as mammals have

their likes and dislikes in the matter of mating, vanish before a statement

of the great natural law, that like will draw to like?


With reference to the occasional display of a male when no hens are

about, is this more remarkable than that song birds should habitually sing

when alone ? It may be a rehearsal; it may be a challenge to a rival; it

may be a spontaneous expression of the bird’s pent-up feelings.


All birds pose, during courtship, whether the sexes are alike or not.

Who has not smiled at the amorous cock sparrow (and been reminded of

gestures sometimes witnessed in human society) with his grotesque hopping

and chirping and wing-trailing and tail-cocking around his fair one ? A



