WATCHING RINGED PLOVERS, ETC. 33 



When peewits seem thus to battle together with 

 their wings, in the air, it may well be that they are 

 really fighting, in which case we may perhaps assume 

 ■that they are two males, and not male and female. 

 But as what I shall have to say with regard to the 

 stock-dove on this point may be applied to the pee- 

 wit, and as I have better evidence in the case of the 

 former bird, I will not dwell on it longer here. 



But the question arises whether in many other 

 cases, when the sporting birds would seem to be male 

 and female, this is really the case. One is apt to 

 think so at first, but when one sees, often, a third bird 

 associate itself with a pair who are thus behaving, and 

 join for a little in their antics, or when one of a pair 

 desisting and alighting on the ground, the other con- 

 tinues to sport in precisely the same way with another 

 bird, or when, again, the supposed lovers become two 

 of a small flock or band, and all sport thus together, 

 crossing and intermingling till they again separate : 

 one must suppose that these evolutions, though they 

 may be mostly of a nuptial character, are not sexual 

 in the strictest sense of the term, but that the social 

 element enters more or less largely into them. But 

 amongst savages there are, I believe (if not, let us 

 imagine that there are), dances, the theme of which is 

 marriage, where sometimes men, sometimes women, 

 sometimes men and women, dance together, all having 

 in their mind the primitive ideas suggested by that 

 great institution, men thinking of women, women of 

 men, under every kind of grouping. One may suppose 

 it to be thus with the peewits, as they sport with one 

 another in the air during the nuptial season, in which 

 case the social and sexual elements would be a 

 C 



