34 BIRDS OF THE COUNTRYSIDE 



The fact is that if we beheve in animal love we must 

 also believe in animal friendship. If, on the other hand, 

 " love " is simply a hyperbole for the reproductive 

 instinct, then friendship is one for the herd instinct. 

 The former theory, however, is now scientifically unten- 

 able. " It is hardly necessary," write the authors of 

 the Evolution of Sex, 



" to argue seriously in support of the thesis that love — ^in the sense 

 of sexual sympathy, psychical as well as physical — exists among 

 animals in many degrees of evolution. . . . The fact to be insisted 

 upon is this, that the vague sexual attraction of the lowest organisms 

 has been evolved into a definite reproductive impulse, into a desire 

 often predominating over even that of self-preservation ; that 

 this again, enhanced by more and more subtle psychical additions, 

 passes by a gentle gradient into the love of the highest animals 

 and of the average human individual." 



The evolution of love, said Henry Drummond, is pure 

 science. Sexual love, also, survives the nuptial season 

 in some species, and Mr. Julian Huxley has established 

 the remarkable fact that it precedes it as well. Great 

 crested grebes engage in a lengthy period of courtship 

 before sexual intercourse, which is coeval with nest- 

 building, takes place. 



But love, removed from its purely sexual context, 

 is allied to friendship. If, again, sexual differentiation 

 is as old as the first organisms, the social relation is not 

 much younger, for the former began with the Infusorian 

 Volvox, the latter one stage higher, when one-celled 

 animals began colony-making. The one has had almost 

 as much time to evolve into friendship as the other into 

 love. Therefore I feel that Mr. Hudson is on sound 

 scientific lines when he writes : " My conviction is that 

 all animals distinctly see in those of other species living, 

 sentient, intelligent beings like themselves, and that 

 when birds and mammals meet together they take pleasure 

 in the consciousness of one another's presence, in spite 

 of the enormous differences in size, voice, and habits." 



Bird-friendships are no doubt common in bird-life, 

 and would be more frequently noted, if the art or science 

 of sympathetic observation were not in its infancy. 

 Its day will come, and the naturalist who " bends to 



