262 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



As for the male Blackcocks, they assemble at a special place, 

 in order to court the hens, when they arrive, wait for them to 

 fly in, and court them, then, with as full knowledge of what they 

 mean, and what they expect, as a result of their actions, as could 

 be in the mind of the most wideawake human suitor. They are 

 full of rivalry and jealousy of one another, seem to have a fine 

 martial spirit, but, with all this, " protest " very much more than 

 they fight. Tits, Sparrows, and other unconsidered small birds 

 are, in my opinion, much greater fighters, and a Coot might 

 well sneer at their cowardice. Here, too, as with the Buff— so it 

 appears to me — something is at work which is sapping the real 

 warlike mettle of the birds, and I believe this to be, in either 

 case, the more important part which display takes in securing 

 the favours of the hen. With birds, as with other animals, in- 

 cluding man, pugnacity must be founded upon utility of some 

 sort, so that if charm, in courtship, becomes more and more, 

 and prowess less and less, the former will come to be cultivated 

 at the expense of the latter. 



Be this as it may, I personally have not yet seen a fight that 

 was both furious and long-continued — an experience which I 

 hardly know how to reconcile with what one hears and reads — 

 and, no more than in the case of the Euff, does the hen bird 

 seem won by fighting. Even though a cock should succeed, by 

 rushings and short encounters, in keeping a champ libre for 

 himself, he has yet to prepossess the hen, and this, apparently, 

 he can only do through the recognized formal display. Should 

 he — and here, perhaps, we have a solvent power — become engaged 

 with an adversary, for more than a few seconds, his place will be 

 taken, and, in any case, he cannot long delay rivalry, as the hen 

 keeps moving on amongst the various males. Thus his love of 

 combat, in so far as it may exist, is perpetually checked by his 

 desire to get back to the hen ; but having seen so many instances 

 where, with nothing to disturb them, two birds have seemed 

 simply afraid of each other, I am not quite so clear as are others 

 as to the extent to which it does exist. The weapon which is 

 principally relied upon, by rival males, for defeating one another's 

 designs, cannot properly be called fighting, and is, indeed, a 

 mean and inglorious one. I allude to those interferences which 

 take place upon the favoured suitor's seeking to benefit from the 



