SEXUAL SELECTION IN BIRDS. 379 



vidually — there seems but little need of it, and with every evidence 

 of susceptibility, on the part of the Keeve, something yet seems 

 wanting in the display of the male. I could almost imagine 

 that, natural selection having first brought about the larger size, 

 protective plumage and hard carunculated skin of the latter, 

 sexual selection had more recently got to work on all three. 

 What, in fact, could be a more potent solvent of masculine war- 

 like prowess, as a factor in courtship, than an increasing 

 supremacy of the will of the hen, which, not being influenced by 

 such prowess, gradually rendered it nugatory ? To this solvent, 

 as it appears to me, the hardy virtues of the Ruff are in course 

 of yielding. His fighting, more particularly when it has directly 

 to do with the Reeve* — when her presence is the immediate 

 cause of it — seems the outcome of a generalized state of excite- 

 ment to which actual achievement bears no very fixed relation. 

 For the most part it is vagrant, desultory, nor does it last long. 

 Furthermore, the birds either do not hurt each other at all, or 

 but very little, so that a remark made by the authors of an 

 interesting paper on the sexual relations of spiders, to which I 

 have before referred (ante, p. 210), would apply almost as well 

 here. It is this : — " The males were rushing hither and thither, 

 dancing opposite now one female and now another. Often two 

 males met each other, when a short passage of arms followed. 

 The males were very quarrelsome and had frequent fights, but 

 we never found that they were injured. Indeed, after having 

 watched hundreds of seemingly terrible battles between the 

 males of this and other species, the conclusion has been forced 

 upon us that they are all sham affairs, gotten up for the purpose 

 of displaying before the females, who commonly stand by inte- 

 rested spectators." It is something like this with the Ruffs. 

 Some influence seems at work to turn into mere pageantry the 

 grim reality of war. I do not say that the battles — even the 

 shortest — are fictitious — far from it — or entered into with any 

 conscious idea of display, merely, nor have I observed that the 

 hen bird seems specially interested in them. But the stream of 

 evolution seems to be running in this general direction. The 



* It has appeared to me — and the fact would be significant— that these 

 characteristics are less marked later in the season, when the hens, being all 

 sitting, do not come to the ground at all. 



2g2 



