one part to another at greater or lesser intervals, the whole ending in flight as before."
When I first saw these dances I thought that they arose out of the excitement of the chase—that chase of moths or other insects flying low over the ground which I have noticed—that they were hunting-dances, in fact. I thought the motions of the wings were to beat down the escaping quarry, and I confounded the little springs and leaps into the air, arising out of the dance and being a part of it, with those other ones made with a snap and an object not to be mistaken; but I soon discovered my error. Insect-hunting is only indulged in occasionally, when a wandering moth or so happens to fly by. The general hunt which I have described was incident, I think, to an unusually large number of insects in the air over the warrens, by which not only a band of starlings—as before mentioned—was attracted, but, afterwards, swallows and martins. On such occasions, dancing might conceivably grow out of the excitement of the chase, so as to appear a part of it, but though the two forms of excitement may sometimes intermingle, the tendency would probably be for the one to diminish and interfere with the other. At any rate, almost every dance which I have witnessed has been a dance pure and simple.
What, then, is the meaning of this dancing, of these strange little sudden gusts of excitement arising each day at about the same time and lasting till the birds fly away? We have here a social display as distinct from a nuptial or sexual one, for it is in the autumn that these assemblages of the great plovers take place, after the breeding is all
