also, our conclusions in regard to the lower animals? Here, too, the actions of the female may be often more subtle and difficult to follow than those of the male, though in many cases, as I believe, they are seen plainly enough, but, for a reason shortly to be mentioned, attributed to the male. Yet in the case of birds, at any rate, it is very noticeable in some species that the females, after the couples have once paired off, are extremely eager in their enticements of the males to hymeneal pleasures, and it seems difficult to reconcile this eagerness after marriage with any very real coldness before it—especially as the supposed coy sweetheart of one spring has been the forward wife of the spring before. But there is another point, in this connection, which it is of the utmost importance for us to bear in mind. Birds in which, if in any, we might expect to find the courting actions alike or similar in the male and female (and this would imply an active wooing on the part of each) are of two classes—viz. (1) those in which the sexes are alike or nearly so, and (2) those in which, though they may differ conspicuously, the one is as handsome, or nearly as handsome, as the other. In the first case, the colours of the hen must either be due to the selective agency of the cock, or they must have been transmitted to her through the latter (as being prepotent), in which case they can have no significance as far as the theory of sexual selection is concerned—two possibilities which equally require proving. In the second case—but examples of this nature are not, I believe, numerous—a
