have been land-birds once—bathing, as a special activity, is not so necessary to it there as it was on the land. Being always in the bath, it needs not to specially bathe, or, always bathing, it wants no special bath. It finds itself, however, with an inherited habit which it is impelled to continue; but as the constant sensation of being in the water weakens the desire, as the fact of being there does the necessity, for special ablutions, this energy becomes gradually less governed, and its direction less fixed. The movements being no longer limited to the purpose in which they originated, or exclusively shaped by it, grow more violent, and corporeal activity producing mental excitement, which again reacts upon the former, this violence tends to increase. The result is a mad sort of romp, or play, more or less boisterous in proportion to the greater or less vitality of the bird, or its quieter or livelier disposition, which perhaps is the same thing; and when we have this we have what, in bird life, is called an antic. To generalise it, this antic will be due to the continuance of an energy once directed to a special purpose, but which is now no longer so, or not exclusively; and this, I believe, has been one of the principal paths along which antics have been evolved.
I can, I think, see another reason why the bathing of aquatic birds has passed, as I believe it has in several instances, into an antic or something partaking of that character. They bathe in their own element—water—in which they are thoroughly at home, whilst
