412 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



has been drawn from the premises. There is a test in this 

 matter. True courting display action should, in the early spring, 

 be the habitual causal prelude to pairing, but I have never once 

 seen it so with the Peewit, nor does Miss Haviland state that 

 she has. Miss Haviland writes as though she thought I 

 considered these movements, in toto, to be ordinary display 

 actions, whereas I was the first, I believe, to point out their true 

 character. That was some sixteen years ago now, yet Miss 

 Haviland, so far as I know, is the first endorser or partial 

 endorser of the fact, which, however, by presenting us with a 

 sequence, seems almost to show us the origin of courtship in 

 birds. Again, Miss Haviland is inclined to think that Peewits 

 have special places for their " amatory exercises," and says that 

 if there were no distinction between these and their breeding 

 haunts " this would afford considerable corroborative evidence 

 for some of Mr. Selous' conclusions."* I can certainly claim 

 this corroborative evidence. The birds lay and "roll" over the 

 same areas, and I have found the real nest, with eggs in it, at but 

 a few paces from the "false" one, caused by the rolling of the 

 male on that spot, as also witnessed by me. 



Miss Haviland touches also upon another point of difference 

 in our respective records, on which I might say something if I 

 understood it better ; but I am not sufficiently a grammarian. 

 I know nothing about " the dogmatic tense," and the dogmatic 

 mood (which might seem more germane to the matter) is not 

 mine. 



* ' Zoologist,' p. 222. 



