186 BIRD LIFE ON ISLAND AND SHORE 
As when a problem solves itself a light is shed 
on past difficulties, so the strange co-partnership 
explained many circumstances noted and briefly 
treated in another volume. So rigid, however, 
is the human mind in regard to questions of sex 
that for long Byron’s sneer was of frequent occur- 
rence. I confess that at first I spent time in 
attempting to discover which was the wise Catullus 
and which his friend Hortensius. That I was 
never able to decide. It was, indeed, a decision 
impossible to determine, impossible for long to 
contemplate in regard to a union so evidently 
proper according to Sea Hawk habit and custom. 
Perhaps the younger male—if one was younger 
than the other—was only allowed his proper 
privilege as a sort of Sunday treat, perhaps the 
favours of the lady were scrupulously shared, 
perhaps the mere observation of the function of 
mating gave to the unprocreating male an altru- 
istic satisfaction, a benevolent happiness, a great- 
great-grandfatherly platonic ecstacy. Almost at 
once any ignoble interpretation of this threefold 
union became distasteful; indeed that such a 
thought should have ever been harboured in my 
mind seemed contemptible. Any way, the tie 
uniting these three birds was in their eyes as 
sound as the marriage, say, of the son of the 
Primate of the Church of England to the daughter, 
1 ‘Mutton Birds and other Birds.’ 
