by rapping on a dry and sonorous branch, not only to call the female, but also to charm her; we may say, in fact, that they perform instrumental music. Another bird, the male of the weaver-bird, builds an abode of pleasure for himself, where he goes to sing to his companion.[1]
Audubon has made one observation in regard to Canadian geese which is in every point applicable to the human species. The older the birds are, he says, the more they abridge the preliminaries of their amours. Their poetic and æsthetic sense has become blunted, and they go straight to their object.
Wherever amongst the animal species supremacy in love is obtained by force, the male, nearly always the more ardent, has necessarily become, through the action of selection, larger, stronger, and better armed than the female. Such is in reality the case in regard to the greater number of vertebrates; certain exceptions, however, exist, and naturally these are chiefly found among birds, as they are more inclined than other types to put a certain delicacy in their sexual unions. With many species of birds, indeed, the female is larger and stronger than the male. It is well known to be the same with certain articulates, and these facts authorise us to admit that there is no necessary correlation between relative weakness and the female sex. Must we therefore conclude, with Darwin, that the females of certain birds owe their excess of size and height to the fact that they have formerly contested also for the possession of the males? We may be allowed to doubt it. Almost universally, whether she is large or small, the female is less ardent than the male, and in the amorous tragi-comedy she generally plays, from beginning to end, a passive rôle; in the animal kingdom, as well as with mankind, amazons are rare. Among birds and vertebrates generally the male is much more impetuous than the female, and therefore he has no difficulty in accepting for the moment any companion whatever.[2] This uncontrollable ardour sometimes even urges the males to commit actual attempts on the safety of the family. Thus it happens that the male canary (Fringilla
