16 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING. 
hours with the steadiest persistency. As both sexes roost 
apart at this period, the hens avoid answering the gob- 
blers for some time, but they finally become less obdurate, 
and coyly return the call. When the males hear this, all 
within hearing respond to it promptly and vehemently, 
uttering notes similar to those which the domestic gob- 
blers do when they hear an unusual sound. 
If the female answering the call is on the ground, 
the males fly to her and parade before her with all the 
pompous strutting that characterizes the family. They 
spread and erect their tails, depress their wings with a 
quivering motion and trail them along the ground, and 
draw the head back on the shoulders, as if to increase 
their dignity and importance; then wheel, and march, 
ana swell, and gobble, as if they were trying to outdo 
each other in airs and graces. The female, however, 
pays little attention to these ceremonious parades, and 
demurely looks on while the rivals for her affection try to 
outdo one another in playing the gallant and dandy. 
When the strutting and gobbling fail to win her, the 
candidates for matrimony challenge each other to mortal 
combat, and whichever is successful in the contest walks 
away with her in a most nonchalant manner. The easy 
indifference of the hen as to which she will follow may 
not be pleasing to persons imbued with romantic feelings, 
yet she is only obeying a wise law of nature, which 
decrees that only the fittest should live, and in the lower 
animal world these are characterized by their physical 
qualities. 
The battles between the males are often waged with 
such desperate valor that more than one combatant is 
sent to join the great majority, as they deliver very hard 
blows at each other’s heads, and do not give up a contest 
until they are dead, or so exhausted as to be scarcely able 
to move. When one has killed another, it is said to caress 
the dead bird in an apparently affectionate manner, as if 
