NUPTIAL HABITS OF THE BLACKCOCK. 407 



with the physiological development proper to the season. I would 

 consider, therefore, that these violent motions are, in their in- 

 cipency, at any rate, sexual rather than combative, to whatever 

 end and object they may have been ultimately shaped, whether 

 to that of terrifying rival males by a warlike display, or rousing 

 the amatory feelings of the hen by a courting one. Also, should 

 evidence of any more special end be wanting (end is perhaps the 

 better word, as not implying consciousness), the benefiting of the 

 bird through mere violent activity — erotic athletics one might 

 call it — would be a quite sufficient one. 



Observation is the only path by which we can arrive at true 

 notions in regard to all this. At present I have observed that 

 the birds, when they have seemed most like fighting, when they 

 have most made believe of it as I may say — for of true fighting 

 there has been as yet nothing — have sometimes, at any rate, if 

 not always, approached and thus feinted, without any previous 

 display of this sort — at least that seemed to stand in any imme- 

 diate connection with it. This was certainly the case, this 

 morning, when there was a little of this advancing, confronting, 

 and half-hearted threatening — only a very little certainly — but 

 not any previous saltatory movements. Probably Blackcocks 

 sometimes quarrel and fight out of the breeding-season. It 

 would be interesting to observe whether they then indulge in 

 these antics. If not, they are, probably, not of the war-dance 

 order. The same argument might even be applied in the case 

 of a quarrel with another species, since if such actions, whatever 

 their origin, have now become fighting ones, or such as usher in 

 fighting, then fighting at any time and for any reason ought, 

 one would think, to produce them. Thus male Stone Curlews, 

 when threatening one another in the spring-time, fan the tail 

 very effectively — which I look upon as essentially a sexual dis- 

 play. I have, however, seen one of these birds — when the two 

 species were intermingled over a sandy area — make a rush at a 

 Pheasant, who fled most ignobly, and the tail was not then 

 fanned. Surely if the action had been evolved along lines of 

 intimidation it would have become so essential a point in combat 

 that it could never be dropped. So much then, for the present, 

 in regard to the war-dance or challenging theory of these actions. 

 As to that of sexual display, the hens have not yet put in an 



