TOURNAMENTS AND BALLS 307 



The plajr of adult birds leads naturally to their 

 "balls " and tournaments, which, though un- 

 doubtedly connected with matrimonial arrange- 

 ments, have yet very much the character of assem- 

 blages for amusement ; in many cases, as in 

 Blackcock dances, a great amount of fighting goes 

 on with little real damage, although the more 

 solitary Capercailzie really mauls his opponent 

 savagely. The fights of RuflEs, also, do no more 

 harm than a glove-fight, and although Peafowl and 

 Mandarin Ducks, judging from their habits in 

 captivity, like to assemble for display, there seems 

 to be little real fighting among them ; in the case 

 of the " beauty shows " of the latter, which I 

 have often observed in the evening at the Zoo, it 

 always seemed to me that the birds were all paired 

 already, and came together — on land, be it noted — 

 night after night simply for the fun of the thing, 

 although the ducks did their best to incite the 

 drakes to hustle each other. 



It seems as if there is a tendency in highly 

 evolved species, ' however courageous, to leave off 

 fighting and concentrate on display, and in the 

 well-known case of the Bower-birds of Australasia 

 {Ptilonorhynchince) the play-place is actually laid 

 out and in many cases decorated by the birds. It 

 IS to be noted that these extraordinary developments 

 of bird instinct have occurred in a continent where 

 man was, tiU we developed it, rare and at a low 

 level, which, taken into consideration along with 

 the human attributes so often noticeable in the 



