COURTING DISPLAY INSTINCTS IN BIBBS. 411 



Those acts without result, merely, must be proved to have been 

 attempts to produce the result supposed to have been intelligently 

 wished for, before we are justified in seeing anything that might 

 follow from this. The particular instance, therefore, breaks down, 

 and, beyond it, there is only a form of general assurance which 

 is no more than phraseology. " It is well known," says Miss 

 Haviland, " that all nests undergo considerable repairs and 

 structural alterations, when circumstances require it."* This 

 sounds very human, but my own observations have assured me 

 that these so-called repairs are often undergone when circum- 

 stances do not require it, nor have I ever seen any act of the 

 kind to which such terms seemed strictly applicable, or that 

 could not be more probably explained as due to routine and the 

 strength of the nidificatory instinct. 



I quite agree that the idea that this instinct has originated 

 in and grown out of the uncouth violence of what I have called 

 the sexual frenzy, in birds, seems, at first sight, " in the highest 

 degree fantastic," as Miss Haviland pronounces it to be. But 

 the facts, also, which I have adduced in support of my views, may 

 seem to offend in this way. My apology for them is that they 

 exist, and, for my hypothesis, that it explains them, and therefore 

 till another is forthcoming which explains them better (to do 

 which it must first take note of thern) it is entitled, fantastic- 

 seeming or not, to rank as a provisional one. 



Space only allows me to allude briefly to one or two other 

 points. Miss Haviland says that the conduct of the birds under 

 her observation differed in several particulars from what I have 

 described. f I cannot, for my own part, find any essential 

 difference in fact between our two records, but there is a good 

 deal in interpretation of fact, which is perhaps what is meant. 

 Miss Haviland, for instance, thinks that one part of the uncouth 

 spring-tide actions of the male Peewit constitutes a genuine 

 courting display. I, however, have not seen sufficient evidence 

 that this is the case, nor do I find it in Miss Haviland's notes. I 

 Checking these with my own,§ I believe that a wrong conclusion 



* ' Zoologist,' p. 224. 



\ Ibid., p. 217. 



% Ibid,, p. 219 (d). 



§ Ibid., April, 1902, pp. 136-7. 



