412 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



has been drawn from the premises. There is a test in this 

 matter. True courting display action should, in the early spring, 

 be the habitual causal prelude to pairing, but I have never once 

 seen it so with the Peewit, nor does Miss Haviland state that 

 she has. Miss Haviland writes as though she thought I 

 considered these movements, in toto, to be ordinary display 

 actions, whereas I was the first, I believe, to point out their true 

 character. That was some sixteen years ago now, yet Miss 

 Haviland, so far as I know, is the first endorser or partial 

 endorser of the fact, which, however, by presenting us with a 

 sequence, seems almost to show us the origin of courtship in 

 birds. Again, Miss Haviland is inclined to think that Peewits 

 have special places for their " amatory exercises," and says that 

 if there were no distinction between these and their breeding 

 haunts " this would afford considerable corroborative evidence 

 for some of Mr. Selous' conclusions."* I can certainly claim 

 this corroborative evidence. The birds lay and "roll" over the 

 same areas, and I bave found the real nest, with eggs in it, at but 

 a few paces from the " false " one, caused by the rolling of the 

 male on that spot, as also witnessed by me. 



Miss Haviland touches also upon another point of difference 

 in our respective records, on which I might say something if I 

 understood it better ; but I am not sufficiently a grammarian. 

 I know nothing about " the dogmatic tense," and the dogmatic 

 mood (which might seem more germane to the matter) is not 

 mine. 



* ' Zoologist; p. 222. 



