NUPTIAL HABITS OF THE BLACKCOCK. 259 



a very great difference, as far as effect is concerned, yet it is but 

 of degree; the one is but a development of the other, as it 

 appears to me, a prolongation and accentuation of it, carried to 

 an extreme point. That it springs from strong excitement, for 

 which some active vent has become necessary, is plain enough, 

 and since brought thus strongly about by the mere flying in of 

 the hen — being most in evidence, moreover, during the breeding- 

 season — it must be considered as of a fundamentally sexual 

 character. Still, as it is not dependent, even in its highest 

 degree, on this cause,* it is very probably an expression of 

 martial ardour, also, that and amatory feelings being, of course, 

 intimately associated. But however this may be, it forms no 

 part of the actual wooing, by the male, of the female, which, as 

 seen, is of a totally different character, wherein the special 

 adornments of the one sex are specially displayed before the 

 other. Since, therefore, the " war-dance," as it has been called, 

 is not specially addressed to the female, that she pays no par- 

 ticular attention to it is nothing to the point, as an argument 

 against sexual selection, though its existence, side by side with 

 the other — that display to which she does pay attention—is, if 

 rightly considered, a very powerful argument for the truth of 

 that doctrine, since only one possible cause for the latter seems 

 now to be left. 



May 14th. — This morning I went to the old, smaller place of 

 meeting, but have nothing to note, it being an extremely poor 

 affair. There were not more than four cock birds there, at any 

 time, no hens came, and nothing happened, till, finally, I was 

 discovered, which clinched the fiasco. As before, no bird flew 

 in till about 4.15, a full hour later than the others fly in to the 

 great gathering-place. On the following morning I was kept in 

 by the weather, it being both a tempest and pouring with rain. 

 I had, indeed, often emerged upon the dark moor-top, cycle in 

 one hand and umbrella in the other, but there is a limit to 

 everything. 



May 16th. — Seated by 3. The melancholy, thin, quavering 

 cry of the Curlew. Then the Lark. First Blackcock down at 

 3.20. " Chu-whais " — faint at first — whirbling a few minutes 



:;: The " dance " that I saw in Norway was performed by one solitary 

 bird. 



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