BIBDS — ESTHETIC EMOTIONS. 
281 
their bowers, decorated and kept them in repair, for 
several years. In a letter from the late Mr. F. Strange, 
it is said : — 
My aviary is now tenanted by a pair of satin-birds, which 
for the last two months have been constantly engaged in con- 
structing bowers. Both sexes assist in their erection, but the 
male is the principal workman. At times the male will chase 
the female all over the aviary, then go to the bower, pick up a 
gay feather or a large leaf, utter a curious kind of note, set all 
his feathers erect, run round the bower, and become so excited 
that his eyes appear ready to start from his head, and he con- 
tinues opening first one wing and then another, uttering a low 
whistling note, and, like the domestic cock, seems to be picking 
ip something from the ground, until at last the female goes 
gently towards him, when after two turns round her, he sud- 
denly makes a dash, and the scene ends.’ 1 
I have said that if this case stood alone it would con- 
stitute ample evidence that some animals possess emotions 
of the beautiful. But the case does not stand alone. 
Certain humming-birds, according to Mr. Gould, decorate 
the outsides of their nests 6 with the utmost taste ; they 
instinctively fasten thereon beautiful pieces of flat lichen, 
the larger pieces in the middle, and the smaller on the 
part attached to the branch. Now and then a pretty 
feather is intertwined or fastened to the outer sides, the 
stem being always so placed that the feather stands out 
beyond the surface.’ Several other instances might be 
rendered of the display of artistic feeling in the architec- 
ture of birds ; and, as Mr. Darwin so elaborately shows, 
there can scarcely be question that these animals take 
emotional pleasure in surveying beautiful plumage in the 
opposite sex, looking to the careful manner in which the 
males of many species display their fine colours to the 
females. Doubtless the evidence of aesthetic feeling is 
much stronger in the case of birds than it is in that of 
any other class ; but if this feeling is accepted as a suffi- 
cient cause, through sexual selection, of natural decoration 
in the members of this class, we are justified in attribut- 
ing to sexual selection, and so to aesthetic feeling, natural 
1 Gould, Birds a f Australia, vol. i.. pp. 412-15, 
