280 THE DESCENT OF MAN 



it is said that the lower animals have a sense of beauty, it 

 must not be supposed that such sense is comparable with 

 that of a cultivated man, with his multiform and complex 

 associated ideas. A more just comparison would be between 

 the taste for the beautiful in animals, and that in the lowest 

 savages, who admire and deck themselves with any brilliant, 

 glittering, or curious object. 



From our ignorance on several points, the precise man- 

 ner in which sexual selection acts is somewhat uncertain. 

 Nevertheless, if those naturalists who already believe in 

 the mutability of species will read the following chapters, 

 they will, I think, agree with me that sexual selection has 

 played an important part in the history of the organic world. 

 It is certain that among almost all animals there is a struggle 

 between the males for the possession of the female. This 

 fact is so notorious that it would be superfluous to give 

 instances. Hence the females have the opportunity of 

 selecting one out of several males, on the supposition that 

 their mental capacity suffices for the exertion of a choice. 

 In many cases special circumstances tend to make the strug- 

 gle between the males particularly severe. Thus the males 

 of our migratory birds generally arrive at their places of 

 breeding before the females, so that many males are ready 

 to contend for each female. I am informed by Mr. 

 Jenner "Weir that the bird-catchers assert that this is 

 invariably the case with the nightingale and blackcap, 

 and with respect to the latter he can himself confirm the 

 statement. 



Mr. Swaysland, of Brighton, has been in the habit, 

 during the last forty years, of catching our migratory birds 

 on their first arrival, and he has never known the females 

 of any species to arrive before their males. During one 

 spring he shot thirty -nine males of Eay's wagtail (^Budytes 

 Eaii) before he saw a single female. Mr. Gould has ascer- 

 tained, by the dissection of those snipes which arrive the 

 first in this country, that the males couie before the females. 

 And the like holds good with most of the migratory birds 



