LOVE ANTICS AND DANCES. 375 



The diversity of the sounds, hoth vocal and instrumental, made 

 by the males of many birds during the breeding-season, and the 

 diversity of the means for producing such sounds, are highly re- 

 markable. We thus gain a high idea of their importance for 

 sexual purposes, and are reminded of the conclusion arrived at 

 as to insects. It is not difficult to imagine the steps by which 

 the notes of a bird, primarily used as a mere call or for some 

 other purpose, might have been improved into a melodious love 

 song. In the case of the modified feathers, by which the drum- 

 ming, whistling or roaring noises are produced, we know that 

 some birds during their courtship flutter, shake, or rattle their 

 unmodified feathers together; and if the females were led to 

 select the best performers, the males which possessed the 

 strongest or thickest, or most attenuated feathers, situated 

 on any part of the body, would be the most successful; and 

 thus by slow degrees the feathers might be modified to al- 

 most any extent. The females, of course, would not notice 

 each slight successive alteration in shape, but only the sounds 

 thus produced. It is a curious fact that in the same class of ani- 

 mals, sounds so different as the drumming of the snipe's tail, 

 the tapping of the woodpecker's beak, the harsh trumpet-like cry 

 of certain water-fowl, the cooing of the turtle-dove, and the song 

 of the nightingale, should all be pleasing to the females of the 

 several species. But we must not judge of the tastes of distinct 

 species by a uniform standard; nor must we judge by the standard 

 of man's taste. Even with man, we should remember what dis- 

 cordant noises, the beating of tom-toms and the shrill notes of 

 reeds, please the ears of savages. Sir S. Baker remarks,™ that 

 "as the stomach of the Arab prefers the raw meat and reeking 

 "liver taken hot from the animal, so does his ear prefer his 

 "equally coarse and discordant music to all other." 



Love-Antics and Dances. — The curious love gestures of some 

 birds have already been incidentally noticed; so that little need 

 here be added. In Northern America, large numbers of a grouse, 

 the Tetrao phasianellus, meet every morning during the breeding- 

 season on a selected level spot, and here they run round and 

 round in a circle of about fifteen or twenty feet in diameter, so 

 that the ground is worn quite bare, like a fairy-ring. In these 

 Partridge-dances, as they are called by the hunters, the birds 

 assume the strangest attitudes, and run round, some to the left 

 and some to the right. Audubon describes the males of a heron 

 (Ardea herodias) as walking about on their long legs with great 

 dignity before the females, bidding defiance to their rivals. With 

 one of the disgusting carrion-vultures (Cathartes jota) the same 



=8 The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia,' 1S61, p. 203. 



