PUGNACITY IN MALE BIRDS. 
193 
question which naturally arises. I have no data upon which to 
found an answer. I shall be delighted to receive one from some 
one who resides in the Lake District. 
Before I close this rather lengthy letter, I feel that I must 
inform such of our members as are not acquainted with the fact, 
that, thanks mainly to the exertions of two of our members, Miss 
Frances Power Cobbe, and the Rev. H. D. Rawnsley, a memorial 
is about to be (perhaps by this time has been) erected on Helvel- 
lyn, to the memory of that faithful dog, “ a sort oiyallar tarrier ,” 
as I heard him described in Lakeland language, who guarded 
his master’s body for some three months after the life had passed 
out of it, owing to a fall from one of the Helvellyn cliffs. The 
following quotation from Wordsworth’s poem, “ Fidelity,” will 
best recall the incident to the minds of your readers : — 
“ But hear a wonder, for whose sake, 
This lamentable tale I tell ! 
A lasting monument of words 
This wonder merits well. 
The dog, which still was hovering nigh, 
Repeating the same timid cry, 
This dog had been through three months’ space 
A dweller in that savage place. 
“Yes, proof was plain that since the day 
On which the traveller thus had died, 
The dog had watched about the spot, 
Or by his master’s side : 
How nourished here through such long time 
He knows Who gave that love sublime, 
And gave that strength of feeling great 
Above all human estimate.” 
W. G. Wheatcroft. 
Bath, lyth Novembey, 1890. 
PUGNACITY IN MALE BIRDS. 
IjprOTTfl N “Darwinism” Dr. Wallace pronounces against that 
jKJ branch of Darwin’s theory of sexual selection which 
gSgl depends upon tire display of decorative plumage by 
' 1 the males and the choice of the most beautiful by the 
females. The display by the males is undoubted, as all ob- 
servers will testify. That of the goldfinch is a good typical ex- 
ample, and I believe that it is customary with most of the species 
of our birds whose males are differently coloured to the females. 
And where the colours are alike in both sexes the display is 
often of the vocal accomplishments of the male, which might 
afford a field for choice. But if sexual selection depends pri- 
marily upon the struggles of the males, there is, as Dr. Wallace 
shows, very little room for the theory of choice by the females. 
