52 
SEXUAL SELECTION : BIRDS. 
Part II.. 
ever, of most birds and various strange cries are chiefly 
uttered during the breeding-season, and serve as a 
charm, or merely as a call-note, to the other sex. 
Naturalists are much divided with respect to the object 
of the singing of birds. Few more careful observers ever 
lived than Montagu, and he maintained that the males 
of song-birds and of many others do not in general 
search for the female, but, on the contrary, their 
business in the spring is to perch on some conspicuous 
spot breathing out their full andamorous notes, which, 
by instinct, the female knows, and repairs to the spot to 
choose her mate.”^'^ Mr. Jenner Weir informs me that 
this is certainly the case with the nightingale. Bech- 
stein, who' kept birds during his whole life, asserts, that 
the female canary always chooses the best singer, and 
that in a state of nature the female finch selects that 
male out of a hundred whose notes please her most.”^® 
There can be no doubt that birds closely attend to 
each other’s song. Mr. Weir has told me of the case of 
a bullfinch which had been taught to pipe a German 
waltz, and who was so good a performer that he cost 
ten guineas ; when this bird was first introduced into 
a room where other birds were kept and he began ta 
sing, all the others, consisting of about twenty linnets 
and canaries, ranged themselves on the nearest side of 
their cages, and listened with the greatest interest to’ 
the new performer. Many naturalists believe that the* 
singing of birds is almost exclusively the effect of ri- 
valry and emulation,” and not for the sake of charming 
their mates. This was the opinion of Daines Barrington 
and White of Selborne, who both especially attended to 
‘Ornithological Dictionary,’ 1833, p. 475. 
‘ Nat urge schichte der Stubenvogel,’ 1840, s. 4. Mr. Harrison Weir 
likewise writes to me : — “ I am informed that the best singing males. 
“ generally get a mate first when they are bred in the same room.” 
