HABITS OF THE PEEWIT. 141 



noted the spasmodic manner in which the tail was from time to 

 time suddenly bent down. It is true that it then tightly clasped — 

 as one may almost call it — the edge of the nest, pressing hard 

 against it on the outer side. But though such action may now 

 have become part of a shaping process, yet it was impossible for 

 me, when I saw it, not to think of the Peewit, in which something 

 markedly similar could have answered no purpose of this kind. 

 Were the latter bird instead of rolling on the ground to do so in 

 a properly constructed nest of a size suitable to its own bulk, 

 the tail, upon being bent forcibly down in the way I have 

 mentioned, would compress the rim of it just as does that of the 

 Blackbird. And were the Blackbird to go through the motions 

 which I witnessed, on the bare ground and side by side with the 

 Peewit, a curious parallel would, I think, be exhibited. To these 

 two I may add the Rook, and — from recent observation — the 

 Australian or Black Swan. Similarity of the cup of many built 

 nests to the cup-shaped hollow in which so many ground-laying 

 birds deposit their eggs, is, indeed, a significant thing, and the 

 significance is increased when we see the same or very similar 

 movements employed in the shaping of both. 



In the case of these Peewits it is true that the pairing, when 

 I saw it, did not take place on the same spot where the rolling 

 afterwards did. Nevertheless, the distance was not great, and it 

 varied considerably. The run which preceded the rolling com- 

 menced immediately on the consummation of the nuptial rite, 

 and if this run, which varied in length, were to become shorter 

 and ultimately to be eliminated altogether, the bird would then 

 be pairing, rolling, and, at last, as seems to me highly probable, 

 laying its eggs in one and the same place. That these strange 

 activities should succeed, and not precede, the actual pairing is 

 indeed a curious thing ; but I suggest that the rolling of a single 

 bird differs only, in its essential character, from actual pairing, 

 by the fact of its being single, and that, thus, the primary sexual 

 instinct contains, and gives birth to, the secondary nest-making 

 one. At any rate, in the Peewit, movements of a highly curious 

 nature immediately succeed, and seem, thus, to be related to, the 

 act of pairing, and whilst these movements, as a whole, bear a 

 peculiar stamp (expressed by the term " sexual "), some of them, 

 not separable from the tout ensemble, suggest, also, the making of a 



