478 THE DESCENT OF MAN 



ens when a dainty morsel is found. The hen, when she has 

 laid an egg, "repeats the same note very often, and con- 

 cludes with the sixth above, which she holds for a longer 

 time;" "" and thus she expresses her joy. Some social birds 

 apparently call to each other for aid ; and as they flit from 

 tree to tree, the flock is kept together by chirp answering 

 chirp. During the nocturnal migrations of geese and other 

 water-fowl, sonorous clangs from the van may be heard in 

 the darkness overhead, answered by clangs in the rear. 

 Certain cries serve as danger signals, which, as the sports- 

 man knows to his cost, are understood by the same species 

 and by others. The domestic cock crows, and the hum- 

 ming-ljird chirps, in triumph over a defeated rival. The 

 true song, however, of most birds and various strange cries 

 are chiefly uttered during the breeding season, and serve as 

 a charm, or merely as a call-note, to the other sex. 



Naturalists are much divided with respect to the object of 

 the singing of birds. Few more careful observers ever lived 

 than Montagu, and he maintained that the "males of song- 

 birds and of many others do not in general search for the 

 female, but, on the contrary, their business in the spring is 

 to perch on some conspicuous spot, breathing out their full 

 and amorous notes, which, by instinct, the female knows, 

 and repairs to the spot to choose her mate. ' ' " Mr. Jenner 

 Weir informs me that this is certainly the case with the 

 nightingale. Bechstein, who kept birds during his whole 

 life, asserts, "that the female canary always chooses the 

 best singer, and that in a state of nature the female finch 

 selects that male out of a hundred whose notes please her 

 most." "* There can be no doubt that birds closely attend 

 to each other's song. Mr. Weir has told me of the case of 

 a bullfinch which had been taught to pipe a German waltz, 



'» The Hon. Daines Barrington, "Pliilosoph. Transact.," 1773, p. 252. 



" "Ornithological Dictionary," 1833, p. 475. 



'' "Naturgeschichte der Stubenvogel, " 1840, s. 4. Mr. Harrison "Weir like 

 wise writes to me: "I am informed that the best singing males generally get a 

 mate first, when they are bred in the same room." 



