SEXUAL SELECTION IN BIRDS. 181 



Eeeve hindering one another in the discharge of the marital 

 office. When one sees hen birds coming up uninvited to the 

 male, and acting in this way, one begins to wonder what that 

 oft-used phrase, " the coyness of the female," really means, and 

 one realizes forcibly the enormous proportion which mere assev- 

 eration, repeated from mouth to mouth and from book to book, 

 bears, in natural history, to actual ascertainment. If the hen 

 acts like this at 4 in the morning, when all the world is in 

 bed, it is conceivable that later, when it is up, she may be 

 a little "coy," i. e. sated. The question is whether the supposed 

 coyness is not always to be explained by some fact which bears 

 no real relation to the idea conveyed by the word. The male is 

 often coy in the same way, and would be called so were he not 

 the male. Disinclination to a certain act, for a variety of reasons, 

 comprehensible in themselves, and shared by both sexes, is not 

 an active principle of dislike confined to one sex only. Instead, 

 therefore, of using the word in the loose way that we do, we 

 should set ourselves to ascertain if there is really such a thing in 

 nature as we understand by it. These Eeeves, at any rate, had 

 thrown off all modesty, if they ever possessed it, of which I have, 

 as yet, seen no evidence. Possibly their numbers, by exciting a 

 spirit of emulation, may have had something to do with the 

 matter, but I rather suppose that more have come because more 

 have felt the inclination to. I counted, at different times, ten, 

 twelve, and thirteen, and as the one I have spoken of, who has a 

 distinctive appearance, was not amongst them — at least, I never 

 saw her — this makes fourteen, as the minimum number of Eeeves 

 belonging to the flock, exclusive of one or two nondescript-look- 

 ing birds, whose sex I have not yet felt sure about. 



There were also one or two cases of male unisexual coition, 

 but this was not so noticeable a feature as it has, at some other 

 times, been. A Eedshanks that, on two occasions, entered the 

 charmed circle, was, each time, wooed by a Euff, but ran only 

 the faster. 



Now, too, it struck me, more forcibly than it has before, that 

 the Eeeves were pairing promiscuously — that the same bird, I 

 mean, admitted two or more Euffs. But, again, certainty in 

 regard to this was impossible, and it may very well not have 

 been the case. The general abandon of the scene was calculated 



