68 
SEXUAL SELECTION : BIEDS. 
PxVET II. 
hot from the animal, so does his ear prefer his equally 
coarse and discordant music to all other.” 
Love-Aniics and Dances. — The curious love-gestures 
of various birds, especially of tlie Gallinacese, have 
already been incidentally noticed ; so that little need 
liere be added. In Northern America, large numbers 
of a grouse, the Tetrao phasianellus, meet every morning 
during the breeding-season on a selected level spot, 
and here they run round and round in a circle of about 
fifteen or twenty feet in diameter, so that the ground 
is worn quite bare, like a feiry-ring. In these Par- 
tridge-dances, as they are called by the hunters, the 
birds assume the strangest attitudes, and run round, some 
to the left and some to the right. Audubon describes 
the males of a heron (Ardea herodias) as walking 
about on their long legs with great dignity before 
the females, bidding defiance to their rivals. With 
one of the disgusting carrion-vultures (Cathartes 
jota) the same naturalist states that the gesticulations 
and parade of the males at the beginning of ^the 
love-season are extremely ludicrous.” Certain birds 
perform their love-antics on the wing, as we have seen 
with the black African weaver, instead of on the 
ground. During the spring our little white-throat 
{Sylvia cinerea) often rises a few feet or yards in the 
air above some bush, and flutters with a fitful and 
fantastic motion, singing all the while, and then drops 
to its perch.” The great English bustard throws 
himself into indescribably odd attitudes whilst courting 
the female, as has been figured by Wolf. An allied 
Indian bustard {Otis hengalensis) at such times rises 
perpendicularly into the air with a hurried flapping 
of his wings, raising his crest and puffing out the 
feathers of his neck and breast, and then drops to the 
