22 2 Habit and Instinct. 



Mr. Maynard's reply was as follows : " About the date 

 you say {i.e. 1868 or 1869) I shot three male redwings 

 in one meadow (at Newtonville, Mass.), all over one nest. 

 The first was in high plumage, the second less so, the third 

 quite young, and I left with the female a young bird of the 

 previous year, judging by the absence of red on the wing." 

 We have taken the song of birds as an example of 

 activities which are associated with a state of emotional 

 exaltation. There are, however, as has incidentally 

 appeared, other forms of activity, such as so-called love- 

 antics, aerial evolutions, dances, and many modes of active 

 display, often correlated with the possession of special 

 external adornments, of which one or two typical cases 

 may be given, since they further open up the question 

 of the nature and origin of habit and instinct. 



" How many evenings," writes Mr. F. Chapman, in his 

 " Birds of Eastern North America," * " have I tempted the 

 malaria germs of Jersey lowlands to watch the woodcock 

 {Philohela minor) perform his strange sky-dance ! He 

 begins on the ground, with a formal periodic peent, 

 jieent, an incongruous preparation for the wild rush that 

 follows. It is repeated several times before he springs 

 from the ground, and on whistling wings sweeps out on 

 the first loop of a spiral which may take him three hundred 

 feet from the ground. Faster and faster he goes, louder 

 and shriller sounds his wing-song ; then, after a moment's 

 pause, with darting headlong flight, he pitches in zigzags 

 to the earth, uttering, as he falls, a clear twittering 

 •whistle. He generally returns to near the place from 

 which he arose, and the peewit is at once resumed as a 

 preliminary to another round in the sky." 



Mr. Ernest E. Thomson describes t how the American 



* p. 153. 



t Quoted by F. M. Chapman, « Birds of Eastern North America," p. 198. 



