XI COLOUR AND SONG 309 
Birds are equally wonderful. A number of these 
combine to erect a bower, which they decorate with 
shells, feathers, and anything that commends itself 
as ornamental, the cock-birds doing most of, but 
not all, the work. In these bowers go on antics of a 
much more gentle and sedate kind than those just 
described. It is much to be regretted that the Bower 
Birds at the Zoological Gardens seem recently to have 
had no spirit for architecture or for elaborate sports. 
Among our English birds, as I have said, antics on a 
grand scale are unknown, perhaps because they have 
a richness and variety of song sufficient to express any 
Fic. 74.—Snipe’s outer tail-feather (after Darwin). 
emotion. But we have occasional instances of instru- 
mental music in our domestic and wild birds. The 
Peacock rattles his quills. The “drumming” noise 
made by the Snipe, as he descends with wild speed 
from the sky, is now known to be caused partly by 
the curiously curved outer tail-feathers. If one of 
these is held in the hand and waved rapidly through 
the air, the “drumming” is actually heard. The 
wings probably assist. 
Fighting is very often combined with antics, notably 
by the Blackcock and Capercailzie. 
In some cases the fighting itself seems merely to be 
of an antic character, the males sparring with little 
1 See Darwin’s Descent of Man, vol. ii., p. 64. 
