122 
SEXUAL selection: birds. 
Part II. 
hand, in effecting hybrid unions between the male 
pheasant and common hens, Mr. Hewitt is convinced 
that the pheasant invariably prefers the older birds. 
He does not appear to be in the least influenced by 
their colour, but is most capricious in his attach- 
ments.” From some inexplicable cause he shews the 
most determined aversion to certain hens, which no 
care on the part of the breeder can overcome. Some 
hens, as Mr. Hewitt informs me, are quite unattractive 
even to the males of their own species, so that they 
may be kept with several cocks during a whole sea- 
son, and not one egg out of forty or fifty will prove 
fertile. On the other hand with the Long-tailed duck 
{Harelda glacialis), it has been remarked,” says 
M. Ekstrom, ‘^that certain females are much more 
courted than the rest. Frequently, indeed, one sees 
an individual surrounded by six or eight amorous 
males.” Whether this statement is credible, I know 
not; but the native sportsmen shoot these females in 
order to stuff them as decoys.^^ 
With respect to female birds feeling a preference for 
particular males, we must bear in mind that we can 
judge of choice being exerted, only by placing our- 
selves in imagination in the same position. If an 
inhabitant of another planet were to behold a number 
of young rustics at a fair, courting and quarrelling 
over a pretty girl, like birds at one of their places of 
assemblage, he would be able to infer that she had the 
power of choice only by observing the eagerness of the 
wooers to please her, and to display their finery. Now 
with birds, the evidence stands thus ; they have acute 
powers of observation, and they seem to have some 
Mr. Hewitt, quoted in ‘ TegetmeiePs Poultry Book,’ 1866, p. 165. 
Quoted in Lloyd’s ^ Game Birds of Sweden,’ p. 315. 
