NOTES AND QUERIES. 71 



— quite a different story. I have no wish to juggle with words, but 

 when originally employing the term " devices," the aerial evolutions 

 and weird, fantastic wheelings of the cock bird — then popularly sup- 

 posed to be the hen — alone were in my mind. The facts, broadly 

 stated, according to my experience, are these : — While the female is 

 sitting the male keeps guard, and on the approach of an intruder tries 

 to mislead and confuse him — three or four other cocks will occasionally 

 assist — by aerial devices, his mate, meantime, running quickly and 

 silently away from the nest for a considerable distance. When the 

 eggs are hatched, however, very different tactics prevail ; both parents 

 are then assiduous in their clamorous endeavours to draw intruders 

 away from where their young are concealed. I may add that some 

 years ago I took the trouble to look up and tabulate what upwards of 

 thirty authors of books on birds had to say on the point at issue, 

 and I found that Selby alone of the entire number had got the 

 the true facts correctly. It is unquestionably the rule for the female 

 to run from the nest when danger threatens, but I have known 

 a sitting bird, come upon very suddenly from over a hill and taken 

 quite unawares, to fly direct from her nest ; and I have studied the 

 point sufficiently to learn that the female will also fly from the nest at 

 times if she has already been somewhat disturbed, and I have always 

 regarded such action as meaning — Oh ! the whereabouts of my nest is 

 known ; why should I any longer have recourse to a useless artifice to 

 conceal it? — H. S. Davenport (Melton Mowbray). 



Pairing Manosuvres of Birds. — With reference to Mr. Selous' recent 

 remarks on the similarity of the pairing manoeuvres of both sexes in 

 certain birds, I should like to draw attention to the Satin Bower-bird 

 (Pdlorhynchus violaceus) as a good example of this. I often observed 

 these birds, during my stay in England last summer, at the London 

 Zoological Gardens, and repeatedly noticed that the female uttered the 

 same absurd fizzling song as the male, and used the same gestures. I 

 especially noticed that both sexes frequently jerked up the closed 

 wings, thus, in the case of the hen, showing their yellow lining. Now, 

 if the male of this bird were conspicuously coloured on the under side 

 of the wings, and used this gesture as he does at present, it would be 

 put down as designed for a sexual attraction ; and as the female birds 

 are supposed, with much reason, to frequently exhibit a former stage 

 in the colouration of the male, it may be suggested that in this case 

 the colouration of the wings and the trick of lifting them was originally 

 masculine ; and that the male, having acquired his purple plumage, 

 has still retained it, just as the dull-coloured grey forms of the tame 



