130 BIRDS OF THE COUNTRYSIDE 



would go together. Occasionally a tramp would appear 

 on the scene — a sparrow perching on the top of the 

 box — and instantly she flies out at him and sends 

 him packing right out of the garden. Once an oxeye 

 called at the box with a view to tenancy while the 

 rightful owners were at the other end of the garden. 

 The air became electric : the hen flew straight into 

 the box, and the cock fell upon the oxeye, who put 

 up a semblance of resistance for a few seconds and 

 then took to his heels. But I never witnessed the 

 smallest unfriendliness between the two pairs nesting 

 in the same garden within a dozen yards of each 

 other. Yet if Mr. Eliot Howard's fantastic theory 

 (as I cannot but call it) in Territory in Bird Life 

 were true, these pairs should have been in constant 

 and severe combat through trespassing. The most 

 patient of observers, the ablest of men, fall into 

 perversities as soon as they treat animals as automata, 

 as pawns of complex biological reaction and peremp- 

 tory inheritance. He approaches birds, that is to say, 

 as an engineer would approach horses, and to treat the 

 whole psychological problem of bird-sex as a congenital 

 obligation for the effective discharge of the process 

 of reproduction is the same as treating horses in 

 terms of motor-cars. There is a lot in the territorial 

 theory, and the selection of individual sites for breeding 

 purposes does play a large part in the biological change 

 from the Socialism of winter to the Individualism of 

 spring. But Mr. Howard intenselj' cultivates this part 

 to the detriment of the whole, a not infrequent lapse 

 of the expert. He thrashes his theory until it drops 

 with exhaustion. And all because he regards birds 

 as dominoes on a biological draught-board, instead of 

 intelligent living creatures. 



Sometimes the hen would go no further than the 

 plum-tree, and the cock would pop a larval gooseberry 

 moth into her mouth, and she, accepting it with a 

 kind of demure grace, sprang back into her nest. 

 In such fondness and service they passed their 

 crowded days. 



The cock was full of marital solicitude. One day 



