Peewits, besides those aerial antics which are of love, or appertaining to love, have some other and very strange ones, of the same nature, which they go through with on the ground. A bird, indulging in these, presses his breast upon the ground, and uses it as a pivot upon which he sways or rolls, more or less violently, from side to side. The legs, during this process, are hardly to be seen, but must, I suppose, support the body, which is inclined sharply upwards from the breast. The wings project like two horns on either side of the tail, which is bent down between them, in a nervous, virile manner. All at once, a spasm or wave of energy seems to pass through the bird, the tail is bent, still more forcibly, down, the body and wings remaining as before; and, with some most energetic waggles of it, from side to side, the generative act appears to be performed. That, at any rate, is what it looks like—the resemblance could hardly be more exact.

What is the meaning of this strange performance? The cock bird, say the handbooks, is displaying before the hen. But where is the hen? In nine cases out of ten she is not there; and this, and, still more, the peculiarity of the actions, have convinced me that a wish to please is not the real motive of them. Again, it is assumed that the cock bird, only, rolls in this way. But is this the case? Some further observations, as recorded by me in my field notes, may serve to answer this question. “Two peewits have just paired.” I noticed no prior antics, but, immediately after coition, one of the two—I am not quick enough with the glasses to say which—runs a little way over the sand, and commences to roll. In a moment or two, the other runs up, looking most interested, and, on the first one’s rising and standing aside, immediately sits along, in the exact spot where it was, and in the same sort of attitude, though without rolling. Then this bird rises also, and both stand looking at the place where they have just lain, and making little pecks at it—or just beside it—with their bills. One of the two then walks a little away, so that I lose her, whilst the other one, on which I keep the glasses, and which I now feel sure is the male, rolls, again, in the same place, and in the most marked manner. Then, rising, he runs, for some way, with very short precise little steps, which have a peculiar character about them. His whole pose and attitude is, also, peculiar. The head and beak are pointed straight forward, in a line with the neck, which is stretched straight out, to its fullest extent, the crest lying flat down upon it. In this strange, set attitude, and with these funny little set, formal steps, he advances, without a pause, for some dozen or twenty yards, then stops, resumes his ordinary demeanour, and, shortly, flies off. In a little while the same thing occurs again, and, though still not quick enough with the glasses to be quite certain which bird it is that leads the way, immediately after the nuptial rite has been accomplished, I yet think it is the male; and he rolls now in two different places, making a run to some distance, in the way described, after the first time of doing so. It is only on the second occasion that the other bird runs up to him. The actions of the two are, then, as before, except that the last comer—the female, as I think—rolls this time, slightly, also. It is in a very imperfect and, as one may say, rudimentary manner, but I catch the characteristic, though subdued, motion with the tail.

My glass is now upon a peewit standing negligently on the warrens, when another one, entering its field, flies right down upon and pairs with this bird, without having previously alighted on the ground. Immediately afterwards he (the male) makes his funny little run forward, starting from by the side of the female, and, at the end of it, pitches forward and commences to roll. The female, shortly, comes up to him, with the same interested manner as on the other occasions, and, on his moving his length forward, and sinking down again, she sits in the spot where he has just rolled, pecking on the ground, as before described, whilst he rolls, again, just in front of her. The two birds then rise, and stand together, making little desultory pecks. After a while the hen walks away, leaving the cock, who rolls a little more before following her. A strange performance this rolling is, when seen quite plainly through the glasses. The whole body is lifted up, so that the bird often looks not so much sitting as standing on his breast, the rest of him being in the air. The breast is, thus, pressed into the sand, whilst a rolling or side-to-side movement of it, varying in force, helps to make a cup-shaped hollow. This curious raised attitude, however, alternates with a more ordinary sitting posture, nor is the rolling motion always apparent. After each raising of the wings and tail, they are depressed, then again raised, and so on, whilst, at intervals, there is the curious waggle of the tail, before described, suggesting actual copulation.

In none of the above instances did I walk to examine the place where the birds had rolled after they had left them. They would, indeed, have been difficult to find, but upon another occasion, when the circumstances made this easy, I did so, and found just such a little round basin in the sand as the eggs are laid in. No eggs, however, were ever laid here, whilst the bird was afterwards to be seen rolling in other parts. It is easy, under such circumstances, to keep one peewit—or at least one pair of them—distinct from others, for they appropriate a little territory to themselves, which they come back to and stand about in, however much they may fly abroad. And here the birds return, in my experience, spring-time after spring-time, to lay their eggs, so that I judge them to pair for life. It is well known that the peewit does produce hollows in the way described—as, indeed, he could hardly avoid doing—and as he is constantly rolling in various places numbers of such little empty cups are to be found about the bird’s breeding haunts. Mr. Howard Saunders, in his “Manual of British Birds,” says, alluding to the spring-tide activities of the peewit, “The ‘false nests’ often found are scraped out by the cock in turning round, when showing off to the female.” I have shown what the bird’s movements on these occasions really are. They have upon them, in my opinion, the plain stamp of the primary sexual impulse, and it is out of this that anything which can be looked upon as in the nature of a conscious display must have grown. There is, indeed, evidence to show that one bird performing these actions may be of interest to another, but in spite of this and of the bright colour of the under tail-coverts (which I have seen apparently examined, even touched, by one peewit, whilst another, their owner, was rolling), it may be said that, in the greater number of cases, the performing bird is paid no attention to, and does not, itself, appear to wish to be, being often, to all intents and purposes, alone. What relation, then, do such actions, which are not confined to the peewit, bear to the more pronounced and undoubted cases of sexual display? They are, I believe, the raw material out of which these latter have arisen—sometimes, at least, if not always. I have, also, shown that it is not the male peewit, only, that rolls. As usual, it has been assumed that this is so, because here, as in other cases, it is impossible, in field observation, to distinguish the one sex from the other, and to assume is a much easier process than to find out. Immediately after coition, however, one has both the male and the female bird before one, and under these circumstances I have seen them both act in the same way, as just described. It is true that the actions of the female were less pronounced than those of the male, but it does not follow that this is always the case, and, moreover, it is of no great importance if it is. The essential fact is that both the sexes go through the same movements, and, therefore, if these movements are, as I believe them to be, the basis of sexual display, one can see why, in some cases, there might be an inter-sexual display, and, as a consequence, an inter-sexual selection. But I leave this question, which has been profoundly neglected, to come to another. In the passage I have quoted, the term “false nest” is put in inverted commas, showing, I suppose, that it has often been used, and, consequently, that the close resemblance of the false nest to the real one has been generally recognised. I suggest that the false nest is the real one—by which I mean that there is no essential difference in the process by which each is produced; and, further, that the origin of nest-building generally, amongst birds, has been the excited nervous actions to which the warmth of the sexual feelings give rise, and the activity of the generative organs.

My theory is based upon two assumptions, neither of which, I think, is in itself improbable. The first of these assumptions is that birds, in early times, made no nests, and the second that the eggs were originally laid upon the ground only. Assuming this, and that these ancient birds, like many modern ones, gave themselves up, during the breeding time, to all sorts of strange, frenzied movements over the ground, I suppose the eggs to have been laid in some place which had been the scene of such movements. For, by a natural tendency, birds, like other animals, get to connect a certain act with a certain place, or with certain places. Thus they are wont to roost in the same tree, and often on the same bough of it, to bathe in the same pool or bend of the stream, &c. &c. In accordance with this disposition, their antics, or love-frenzies, would have tended to become localised also; the places where they had been most frequently indulged in would have called up, by association, the nuptial feelings, and, consequently, the eggs would have been more likely to have been laid in such places than in other ones having no special significance. Like every other act that is often repeated, this one of laying in a certain spot would have passed into a habit, and thus the place of mutual dalliance—perhaps of pairing, also—would have become the place of laying, therefore the potential nest. Having got thus far, let us now suppose that one chief form of these frenzied movements, which I suppose to have been indulged in by both sexes, was a rolling, buzzing, or spinning round upon the ground, by which means the bird so acting produced, like the peewit, a greater or lesser depression in it. If the eggs were laid in the depression so formed, they would then have been laid in a nest, but such nest would not have been made with any idea of receiving the eggs, or sheltering the young. Its existence would have been due to excited and non-purposive movements, springing out of the violence of the sexual emotions. Now, however, comes a further stage, which, it might well be thought, could only have grown out of deliberate and intelligent action—I mean at every slight step in the process—on the part of the bird. I allude to the lining of grass, moss, sticks, or even stones or fragments of shells, with which many birds that lay their eggs in a hollow, made by them in the ground, further improve this. That the nature and object of this process is now, through memory, more or less understood by many birds, I, for one, do not doubt; but, as every evolutionist will admit, it is the beginnings of anything, which best explain, and are most fraught with significance. Is it possible that even the actual building of the nest may have had a nervous—a frenzied—origin? Lions and other fierce carnivorous animals will, when wounded, bite at sticks, or anything else lying within their reach. That a bird, as accustomed to peck as a dog or a lion is to bite, should, whilst in a state of the most intense nervous excitement, do the same, does not appear to me to be more strange, or, indeed, in any way peculiar; and that such a trick would be inherited, and, if beneficial, increased and modified, who that has Darwin in his soul can doubt? Now if a bird, whilst ecstatically rolling on the ground, were to pick up and throw aside either small sticks or any other loose-lying and easily-seized objects—such as bits of grass or fibrous roots—I can see no reason why it should not, by stretching out its neck to such as lay just within its reach, and dropping them, again, when in an easier attitude, make a sort of collection of them close about it—of which, indeed, I will quote an instance farther on. Then if the eggs were laid where the bird had rolled, they would be laid in the midst of such a collection.

Now, I submit that these curious actions of the peewit, during the breeding time, support the theory of the origin of nest-building, which I have here roughly sketched, if not entirely, at least to a certain extent. They point in that direction. Here we have movements, on the part of both the male and female bird, which are, obviously, of a sexual character, having upon them, I would say, the plain stamp of the primary sexual instinct. They are most marked—or, at any rate, most elaborate—immediately after the actual pairing, commencing, then, in the curious little run and set attitude of the male. Out of, and as a result of, these movements, a depression in the ground, greatly resembling—if not, as I believe, identical with—that in which the eggs are laid, is evolved, and in or about this is shown a tendency to collect sticks, grass, or other loose substances. But how different are these collecting movements to those which we see in a bird whose nest-building instinct has become more highly developed! They seem to be but just emerging from the region of blind forces, to be only half-designed, not yet fully guided by a distinct idea of doing something for a definite end. Yet it is just these actions that most resemble those which seem so purposive, in the ordinary building of a nest. All the others seem to me to belong to that large and important class of avine movements, which may be called the sexually ecstatic, or love-mad, group. Nor can these two classes of actions be separated from each other. The motion by which the hollow is produced is accompanied by—if it may not rather be said to be a part of—that most pronounced, peculiar, and, as it seems to me, purely sexual one of the tail, or rather of the anal parts; and there is, moreover, the very marked and distinctive run, with the set, rigid attitude—that salient feature of a bird’s nuptial antics—which immediately precedes the rolling, in the same way that the run precedes the jump in athletics. All this set of actions must be looked upon as so many parts of one and the same whole thing, and to explain such whole thing we must call in some cause which will equally account for all its parts. The deliberate intention of making a nest will not do this, for many of the actions noted do not in the least further such a plan. On the other hand, sexual excitement may just as well produce rolling on the ground—as, indeed, it does in some other birds—and, perhaps, even pecking round about on it, as it may the stiff, set run, and those other peculiar movements. And if some of many movements, the cause of all of which is sexual excitement, should be of such a nature as that, out of them, good might accrue to the species, why should not natural selection seize hold of these, and gradually shape them, making them, at last, through the individual memory, intelligent and purposive? since, by becoming so, their ability might be largely increased, and their improvement proceed at a quicker rate. I believe that in these actions of the peewit, which sometimes appear to me to stand in the place of copulation, and at other times commence immediately after it, with a peculiar run, and then go on, without pause or break, to other motions, all of which—even the curious pecking which I have noticed—have, more or less, the stamp of sexual excitement upon them, though some may, in their effects, be serviceable—I believe, I say, that in all these actions we see this process actually at work; and I believe, also, that in the nest-building of species comparatively advanced in the art, we may still see traces of its early sexual origin. I have been, for instance, extremely struck with the movements of a hen blackbird upon the nest that she was in course of constructing. These appeared to me to partake largely of an ecstatic—one might almost say a beatific—nature, so that there was a large margin of energy, over and above the actual business of building—at least it struck me so—to be accounted for. I was not in the least expecting to see this, and I well remember how it surprised and struck me. The wings of this blackbird were half spread out, and would, I think, have drooped—an action most characteristic of sexual excitement in birds—had not the edge of the nest supported them, and I particularly noted the spasmodic manner in which the tail was, from time to time, suddenly bent down. It is true that it then tightly clasped—as one may almost call it—the rim of the nest, pressing hard against it on the outer side. But though such action may now have become part of a shaping process, yet it was impossible for me, when I saw it, not to think of the peewit, in which something markedly similar could have answered no purpose of this kind. Were the latter bird, instead of rolling on the ground, to do so in a properly constructed nest, of a size suitable to its bulk, the tail, being bent forcibly down in the way I have described, would compress the rim of it, just as did that of the blackbird. And were the blackbird to do what I have seen it do, on the bare ground, and side by side with the peewit, a curious parallel would, I think, be exhibited. As far as I have been able to see, the actions of rooks on the nest are very similar to those of the blackbird, and a black Australian swan, that I watched in the Pittville Gardens at Cheltenham, went through movements, upon the great heap of leaves flung down for it, which much resembled those of the peewit upon the ground. By what I understand from the swan-keeper at Abbotsbury, the male of the mute swan acts in much the same way. Of course what is wanted is extended observation of the way in which birds build their nests—that is to say, of their intimate actions when on them, either placing the materials or shaping the structure. If the origin of the habit has been as I imagine, one might expect, here, to see traces of it, in movements more or less resembling those to which I have drawn attention.

I have noticed the curious way in which both the male and female peewit—after movements which appear to me to differ considerably from the more characteristic love-antics of birds in general—peck about at bits of grass, or any other such object growing or lying within their reach; and I have speculated on the possibility of actions like these, though at first of a nervous and merely mechanical character, having grown, at last, into the deliberate and intentional building of a nest. Whether, in the case of the peewit, we see quite the first stage of the process, I will not be certain; but we see it, I believe, in another of our common British birds, viz. the wheat-ear. My notes on the extraordinary behaviour of two males of this bird, whilst courting the female, I have published in my work, “Bird Watching,”21 from which I will now quote a few lines bearing upon this point: “Instead of fighting, however, which both the champions seem to be chary of, one of them again runs into a hollow, this time a very shallow one, but in a manner slightly different. He now hardly rises from the ground, over which he seems more to spin, in a strange sort of way, than to fly; to buzz, as it were, in a confined area, and with a tendency to go round and round. Having done this a little, he runs from the hollow, plucks a few little bits of grass, returns with them into it, drops them there, comes out again, hops about as before, flies up into the air, descends, and again dances about.” Now, here, a bird brings to a certain spot, not unlike such a one as the nest is usually built in—approaching it, at any rate—some of the actual materials of which the nest is composed, and I ask if, under the circumstances, it can possibly be imagined that such bird really is building its nest, in the ordinary purpose-implying sense of the term. As well might one suppose—so it seems to me—that a man, in the pauses of a fierce sword-and-dagger fight with a rival suitor, should set seriously to work house-hunting or furniture-buying. These wheat-ears, I should mention, had been following each other about, for the greater part of the afternoon, and though, as hinted, not exactly fire-eaters, had yet several times closed in fierce conflict. The manner in which the grass was plucked by one of them, partook of the frenzied character of their whole conduct. How difficult, therefore, to suppose that here, all at once, was a deliberate act, having to do with the building of a nest, before, apparently, either of the two rivals had been definitely chosen by the hen bird! Yet, when once the object had been seized, associations may have been aroused by it.

Facts of this kind appear to me to prove, at least, the possibility of a process so elaborate, and, seemingly, so purposive as that of building a nest, having commenced in mere mechanical, unintelligent actions. As further evidence of this, and also of the passing of such actions into a further stage—that of actual construction, more or less combined with intelligence—I will now quote from an interesting account, by Mr. Cronwright Schreiner, of the habits of the ostrich, as farmed in South Africa, which was published in the Zoologist for March 1897, but which I had not read at the time these ideas first occurred to me:—

“The Nest Made by the Pair Together.—The cock goes down on to his breast, scraping or kicking the sand out, backwards, with his feet.... The hen stands by, often fluttering and clicking her wings, and helps by picking up the sand, with her beak, and dropping it, irregularly, near the edge of the growing depression.” (Compare the actions, as I have noted them, of both the male and female peewit.)

“The Little Embankment Round the Nest.—The sitting bird, whilst on the nest, sometimes pecks the sand up, with its beak, nearly as far from the nest as it can reach, and drops it around the body. A little embankment is thus, gradually, formed.... The formation ... is aided by a peculiar habit of the birds. When the bird on the nest is much excited (as by the approach of other birds, or people) it snaps up the sand, spasmodically, without rising from the nest, and without lifting its head more than a few inches from the ground. The bank is raised by such sand as falls inward. The original nest is, merely, a shallow depression.”

Remarks follow on the use of the bank, which has become a part—and an important part—of the nest. We, however, are concerned with the origin both of it and the depression. It seems clear, from the account, that the former is made, in part at least, without the bird having the intention of doing so; whilst, to make the latter, the cock assumes the attitude of sexual frenzy (described in the same paper, and often witnessed by myself), an attitude which does not seem necessary for mere scratching, nor, indeed, adapted for it. Why should a bird, possessing such tremendous power in its legs—moving them so freely, and accustomed to kick and stamp with them—have to sink upon its breast in order to scratch a shallow depression? Surely, considering their length, they could be much less conveniently used, for such a purpose, in this position, than if the bird stood up. If the scratching, however, has grown out of the sexual frenzy, we can, then, well understand the characteristic posture of the latter being continued. I suspect, myself, that the breast of the bird still helps to make the depression, as in courtship it must almost necessarily do—for the ostrich rolls, on such occasions, in much the same way as the peewit.

These nesting habits of the ostrich22 seem to me to support my idea of the origin of nest-making. How strange, if “spasmodic” and “excited” actions have had nothing to do with it, that they should yet help, here, to make the nest! How strange that the cock ostrich, only, should make the depression, assuming that attitude in which he rolls when courting—or, rather, desiring—the hen, if this has no connection with the fact that it is he only (or he pre-eminently) who, in the breeding time, acts in this manner! In most birds, probably—though this has been taken too much for granted—those frenzied movements arising out of the violence of sexual desire, are more violent and frenzied in the male than in the female. In this way we may see, upon my theory, the reason why the cock bird so often helps the hen in making the nest; nor is it more difficult to suppose that the hen, in most cases, may have been led to imitate him, than it is to suppose the converse of this. We might expect, however, that as the process became more and more elaborate and intelligent, the chief part in it would, in the majority of instances, be taken by the female, as is the case; for as soon as a nest had come to be connected, in the bird’s mind, with eggs and young, then her parental affection (the “st????” of Gilbert White), by being stronger than that of the male, would have prompted her to take the lead. I can see no reason why acts which were, originally, nervous, merely—spasmodic, frenzied—should not have become, gradually, more and more rational. Natural selection would have accomplished this; for, beneficent as actions, blindly performed, might be to an animal, they would, surely, be more so, if such animal were able, by the exercise of its intelligence, to guide and shape them, in however small a degree. Thus, not only would those individuals be selected, who performed an act which was advantageous, but those, also, whose intelligence best enabled them to see to what end this act tended, and, so, to improve upon it, would be selected out of these. Such a process of selection would tend to develop, not only the general intelligence, but, in a more especial degree, intelligence directed along certain channels, so that the latter might be out of proportion to the former, and this is what one often seems to see in animals.

Thus, as it appears to me, instead of instinct having commenced in intelligence, which has subsequently lapsed, the latter may often have grown gradually out of the former, blind movements, as we may call them, coming, at length, to have an aim and object, and so to be rational ones. It may be asked, by what door could this intelligence, in regard to actions originally not guided by it, have entered? I reply, by that of memory. A bird does not make a nest or lay eggs once only, but many times. Therefore, though the actions by which the nest is produced, on the first occasion, may have no object in them, yet memory, on the next and subsequent ones, will keep telling the bird for what purpose they have served. Such individuals as remembered this most strongly, and could best apply their recollections, would have an advantage over the others, for their actions would now be rational, and, being so, they would be able to modify and improve them. Their offspring would inherit this stronger memory and these superior powers, and also, probably, a tendency to use them both, in the same special direction. Whether knowledge itself may not, in some sort of way, be inherited, is, also, a question to be asked. If a bird instinctively builds a nest, may it not instinctively know why it does so? If there is any truth in these views, we ought to see, in some of the more specialised actions of animals—and, more particularly, of birds—a mingling, in various proportions, of intelligence and blind, unreasoning impulse. This, to my mind, is just what we do see, in many such; as, for instance, in the courting or nuptial antics, in those other ones, perhaps more extraordinary, which serve to draw one’s attention from the nest or young, and, finally, in the building of the nest. Not only do the two elements seem mingled and blended together, in all of these, but they are mingled in varying proportions, according to the species. No one who has seen both a snipe and a wild duck “feign,” as it is commonly called, being disabled, can have helped noticing that far more of intelligence seems to enter into the performance of the latter bird, than into that of the former. The moor-hen is not a bird that is known in connection with any special ruse or device for enticing intruders from its young, but I have seen one fall into a sort of convulsion, on the water, upon my appearing, very suddenly, on the bank of a little stream where she was swimming, with her young brood. The actions of a snipe, startled from its eggs, were much more extraordinary, and equally, as it seemed to me, of a purely nervous character.23 Here, surely, we must have the raw material for that remarkable instinct, so highly developed in some birds, by which they attract attention from their young, towards themselves. But, if so, this instinct is not lapsed intelligence, but, rather, hysteria become half-intelligent. The part which mere muscular-nervous movements may have played, under the agency of natural selection, in the formation of some instincts, has not, I think, been sufficiently considered.

There is another class of facts which, I think, may be explained on the above view of the origin of the nest-building instinct. Some birds pair, habitually, on the nest, whilst a few make runs, or bowers, for the express purpose, apparently, of courting, and where pairing, not improbably, may also take place. Now, if the ancient nest had been, before everything, the place of sexual intercourse, we can understand why it should, in some cases, have retained its original character, in this respect.

What, now, is the real nature of those frenzied motions in birds, during the breeding season, before they have passed, either into what may properly be called courting antics, or the process of building a nest? I have described what the peewit actually does, and I suggest that the rolling of a single bird differs only, in its essential character, from actual coition, by the fact of its being singly performed, and that, thus, the primary sexual instinct (der thierische Trieb) directly gives birth to the secondary, nest-building one. It is true that the pairing, when I saw it, did not take place on the same spot where the rolling afterwards did. Nevertheless, the distance was not great, and it varied considerably. The run, which preceded the rolling, commenced immediately on the consummation of the nuptial rite, as though arising from the excitation of it—as may be seen with other birds; and if this run, which varied in length, were to become shorter and ultimately to be eliminated altogether, the bird would then be pairing, rolling, and at last, as I believe, laying its eggs in one and the same place.24 Supposing this to have been originally the case, then the early nest would have been put to two uses, that of a thalamum and that of a cradle, and to these two uses it is in some cases put now, as I have myself seen. That out of one thing having two uses—“the bed contrived a double debt to pay”—there should have come to be two things, each having one of these uses—as, e.g., the nest proper and the bower—or that the one use should have tended to eclipse and do away with the other, is, to my idea, all in the natural order of events; but this I have touched upon in a previous chapter. To conclude, in the peewit movements of a highly curious nature immediately succeed, and seem thus to be related to, the generative act, and whilst these movements in part resemble that act, and bear, as a whole, a peculiar stamp, expressed by the word “sexual,” some of them, not separable from the tout ensemble, of which they form a part, suggest, also, the making of a nest; and, moreover, something much resembling a peewit’s nest is, by such movements, actually made.

Taking all this together, and in conjunction with the breeding and nesting habits of the ostrich and some other birds, we have here, as it seems to me, an indication of some such origin of nest-building, amongst birds, as that which I have imagined. That the art is now, speaking generally, in such a greatly advanced state is no argument against its having thus originated, since there is no limit to what natural selection, acting in relation to the varying habits of each particular species, may have been able to effect. Certainly, the actual evidence on which I found my theory, though it does not appear to me to be weak in kind, is very scanty in amount. To remedy this, more observation is wanted, and what I would suggest is that observant men, with a taste for natural history, should, all over the world, pay closer attention to the actual manner in which birds do all that they do do, in the way of courting, displaying, anticking, nest-building, enticing one from their young, fighting, &c. &c.—all those activities, in fact, which are displayed most strongly during the breeding season. I do not at all agree with a certain reviewer of mine, that the scientific value of such observations has been discounted by Darwin—as if any man, however great, could tear all the heart out of nature! On the contrary, I believe that the more we pry the more will truth appear, and I look upon mere general references, such as one finds in the ordinary natural history books, as mere play-work and most sorry reading for an intellectual man. What is the use of knowing that some bird or other goes through “very extraordinary antics in the season of love”? This is not nearly enough. One requires to know what, exactly, these antics are, the exact movements of which they consist—the minutest details, in fact, gathered from a number of observations. When one knows this one may be able to speculate a little, and what interest is there, either in natural history or anything else, if one cannot do that? Mere facts are for children only. As they begin to point towards conclusions they become food for men.

In the study of bird-life nothing perhaps is more interesting than the antics of one sort or another which we see performed by different species, and the nature and origin of which it is often difficult to understand. As has been seen, I account for some of these through natural selection acting upon violent nervous movements, the result either of sexual or some other kind of emotion—as, for instance, sudden fright when the bird is disturbed on the nest, or elsewhere, with its young, producing a sort of hysteria or convulsion; others I believe to be due to what instinct, generally, is often supposed to be, namely, to the lapse of intelligence. I believe that if a certain action or set of actions is very frequently repeated, it comes to be performed unintelligently; nay, more, that there is an imperious necessity of performing it, independently of any good which it may do. It is watching birds fighting which has led me to this conclusion. Far from doing the best thing under the circumstances, they often appear to me to do things which lead to no particular result, neglecting, through them, very salient opportunities. A striking instance of this, though not quite of the kind that I mean, is offered by the stock-dove, for when these birds fight, they constantly interrupt the flow of the combat, by bowing in the most absurd way, not to one another, but generally, so to speak, for no object or purpose whatever, apparently, but only because they must do so. The fact is, the bow has become a formula of courtship, and as courting and fighting are intimately connected, the one suggests the other in the mind of the bird, who bows, all at once, under a misconception, and as not being able to help it. But though there is no utility here, it may be said that there is a real purpose, though a mistaken one, so that the bird is not acting automatically. It is in the actual movements of the fight itself—in the cut and thrust, so to speak—that I have been struck by the automatic character impressed upon some of them. This was especially the case with a pair of snipes that I watched fighting, by the little streamlet here, one morning, perhaps for half-an-hour. They stood facing each other, drawn up to their full height, and, at or about the same instant, each would give a little spring into the air, and violently flap the wings. I would say that they struck with them—that manifestly was what they should have done, the rationale of the action—but the curious point is that this did not seem to be necessary, or, at any rate, it was often, for a considerable space of time, in abeyance. The great thing appeared to be to jump, and, at the same time, to flap the wings, and as long as the birds did this, they seemed satisfied, though there was often a foot or more of space between them. Sometimes, indeed, they got closer together, and then they had the appearance of consciously striking at one another; but having watched them attentively, from beginning to end, I came to the conclusion that this was more apparent than real, and that, provided the wings were waved, it mattered little whether they came in contact with the adversary’s person, or not. For when these snipes jumped wide apart, or, at any rate, at such a distance that each was quite beyond the other’s reach, they did not seem to be struck with the futility of hitting out, under these circumstances, or to be greatly bent on closing, and putting an end to such a fiasco. Far from this, they went on in just the same way, and, for one leap in which they smote each other, there were, perhaps, a dozen in which they only beat the air. I do not mean to suggest that the birds were not actually and consciously fighting, but it certainly did seem to me that their principal fighting action—the blow, with the leap in the air, namely—had become stereotyped and, to some extent, dissociated from the idea of doing injury, in which it had originated. It seemed, in fact, to be rather an end in itself, than a means to an end. Another and very noticeable point, which helped to lead me to this view, was that, except in this way, which, as I have said, was mostly ineffective, the birds seemed to have no idea of doing each other harm. Often they would be side by side, or the beak of the one almost touching the back or shoulder of the other. Yet in this close contiguity, where the one bird was often in a position very favourable, as it seemed, for a non-specialised attack, no such attack was ever made; on the contrary, to go by appearances, one might have thought them both actuated by a quite friendly spirit. After about half-an-hour’s conflict of this description, these snipes flew much nearer to me, so that I could see them even more distinctly than I had done before. I thought, now, that I saw a perplexed, almost a foolish, look on the part of both of them, as though they had forgotten what, exactly, was the object which had brought them into such close proximity; and then, each seeming to remember that to jump and flap the wings was the orthodox thing to do, they both did it, in a random and purposeless sort of way, as though merely to save the situation. This was the last jump made, and then the affaire appeared to end by the parties to it forgetting what it was about, or why there had been one. My idea is that such oblivion may prevail, at times, during the actual combat, which becomes, then, a mere set figure, an irrational dance or display, into which it might, by degrees, wholly pass.

There was another point of interest in this interesting spectacle. The birds, when they were not actually springing or flapping, mutually chased, or, rather, followed and were followed by, each other. But this, too, seemed to have become a mere form, for I never saw either of them make the slightest effort to dash at and seize the other, though they were often quite at close quarters and never very far apart. When almost touching, the foremost bird would turn, upon which the other did also, as a matter of course, but instead of running, walked away in a formal manner, and with but slightly quicker steps. The whole thing had a strange, formal look about it. When this following or dogging—chasing it cannot properly be called—passed into the kind of combat which I have described, it was always in the following manner. The bird behind, having pressed a little upon the one in front, instead of making a dash at him—as would have seemed natural, but which I never once saw—jumped straight into the air, flapping its wings, and the other, turning at the same instant, did likewise, neither blow, if it could indeed be called one, taking effect. The two thus fronted one another again, and the springing and flapping, having recommenced, would continue for a longer or shorter period. When these snipes leaped, their tails were a little fanned, but not conspicuously so. Another thing I noticed was, that the bird retreating often had its tail cocked up perpendicularly, whereas this was not the case with the one following.

Both the two points that struck me in the fighting of these snipes, viz. the apparent inability to fight in any but one set way, and the formal, alternate following of, and retreating from one another, I have noticed, also, in the fighting of blackbirds, and other birds, whilst the last has been pushed to quite a remarkable extreme in the case of the partridge. Pairs of these birds may be seen, as early as January, running up and down the fields—often along a hedge, or, here, a row of pine trees—as though to warm themselves, but really in pursuit of one another, though the interval between them is often so great that, but for both turning at the same precise instant of time, one would think they were acting independently. This interval may be as much as a hundred yards, or even more, and it is often exactly maintained for a very long time. At any moment the two birds, whilst thus running at full speed, may turn, and the chase is then continued in exactly the same way, except that it is now in an opposite direction, and that the pursuer and pursued have changed parts. Apollo—one might say, were the sport of an amorous nature—has become Daphne, Daphne Apollo; for as each turns, each becomes actuated by the spirit that, but a second before, had filled the other—a complete volte face upon either side, both spiritually and corporeally. Keepers have, in fact, told me that it is the male and female partridge, who thus chase one another; but this, from my own observation, I do not believe. Often, indeed, the birds will get out of sight before the interval between them has been lessened, or the pursued one will fly off, followed by his pursuer, without anything in the nature of a combat having occurred. At other times, however, the distance separating the two is gradually diminished, the turns, as it lessens, become more and more frequent, and, at length, a sort of sparring scuffle takes place, in which beak as well as claw is used. One of the birds has been run down, in fact, but the odd thing is that, as soon as it escapes, it turns round again, upon which the other does also, and the scene that I have described recommences. Now why should a bird that has just had the disadvantage in a struggle, and is being pursued by the victor, turn so boldly round upon him, and why—this in a much higher degree—should that victor, with the prestige of his victory full upon him, turn, the instant the bird he has vanquished does, and run away from him like a hare? In all this there appears to me to be something unusual, suggesting that what was, originally, an act of volition, is now no longer so, but has become an automatic reaction to an equally automatic stimulus. The will, as it appears to me, except, of course, in los primeros movimientos, has almost dropped out of use, so that when the drama has once commenced, all the rest follows of itself. I have said that the two birds turn simultaneously. Strictly speaking, I suppose that one of them—the pursued one probably—makes the initial movement towards doing so: but so immediate is the action of the other upon it, that it often looks as though both had swung round at the same instant of time. This, surely, at a distance of fifty or a hundred yards, is, in itself, a very remarkable thing, though, as far as I can make out, these curious chases have not attracted much attention. If we wish to see their real origin, we must watch the fighting of other species. In all, or nearly all, birds, there is a mixture of pugnacity and timidity. The former urges them to rush upon the foe, the latter to turn tail and retreat, whenever they are, themselves, rushed upon. Thus, in most combats, there is a good deal of alternate advancing and retreating, but this is no more than what one might expect, and has a quite natural appearance. In various species, however, the tendency is exaggerated in a greater or less degree, until, in the partridge, we find it developed to a quite extraordinary extent; whilst there is something—a sort of clockwork appearance in the bird’s actions, due, I suppose, to the wonderful simultaneousness with which they turn, and the length of time for which they keep at just the same distance from one another, with a wide gap between them—which strikes one as very peculiar.

Do we not see in these varying degrees of one and the same thing, commencing with what is scarce noticeable, and ending in something extremely pronounced, the passage, through habit and repetition, of a rational action into a formal one? Do we not, in fact, see one kind of antic, with the cause of it? A natural tendency has led to a certain act being so frequently performed that it has become, at last, a sort of set figure that can no longer be shaken off. As, in the case of the partridge, this figure is gone through over and over again, sometimes for an hour or more together, I believe that it will, some day, either quite take the place of fighting, with this species, or become a thing distinct and apart from it; so that its original meaning being no longer recognisable, it will be alluded to as “one of those odd and inexplicable impulses which seem, sometimes, to possess birds,” &c. &c.—so difficult to explain, in fact, that some naturalists would prefer not to try to. For myself, I like trying, and I see, in the curiously set and formal-looking combats of many birds, a possible origin of some of those so-called dances or antics which do not seem to bear any special relation to the attracting or charming of the one sex by the other. The whole thing, I believe, is this. Anything constantly gone through, in a particular manner, becomes a routine, and a routine becomes, in time, automatical, the more so, probably, as we descend lower in the scale of life. Whilst the actions get more and more fixed, the clear purpose that originally dictated them, becomes, first, subordinated, then obscured, finally forgotten, and intelligence has lapsed. We have, then, an antic, but when this has come about, change is likely to begin. For the actions being not, now, of any special use, there will be nothing to keep them fixed, and as muscular activity goes hand in hand with mental excitement, such excitement will, probably, give rise to other actions, which, having no definite object, and being of an energetic character, must often seem grotesque. Movements, indeed, appear odd in proportion as we can see no meaning in them. There being, now, such antics, accompanied with excitement, it is probable that excitement of any kind will tend to produce them, and, the strongest kind of excitement being the sexual one, they are likely to become a feature of the season of love. Moreover, the most vigorous birds will be the best performers in this kind, and if these be the males, then, whether they win the females by their vigour, or whether the females choose them for the result of it—their antics namely—in either case these will increase. For my part, I believe that the one sex will, generally, take an interest in what the other does, which would lead to more and more emulation, and more and more choice. Thus, however any antic may have originated, it seems to me very probable that it will, ultimately, become a sexual one, and it will then often be indistinguishable from such as have been entirely sexual in their origin. Examples of the latter would be, in my view, those frenzied motions, springing from the violence of the sexual passion, which, by their becoming pleasing to the one sex, when indulged in by the other, have been moulded, by this influence, into a conscious display. Inasmuch, however, as, upon my supposition, almost any action can become an antic, and as a long time may then elapse before it is employed sexually, it is natural that we should find, amongst birds, a number of antics which are not sexual ones, and which neither add to, nor detract from, the evidence for or against sexual selection.

It may be said that the snipes which I saw fighting were only one pair. Still they were a pair of snipes, and as representative, I suppose, as any other pair of the same bird. No doubt there would be degrees of efficiency and formality, but this would not affect the general argument. Wherever, in nature, any process is going on, some of the individuals of those species affected by it will be more affected than others.

Coal-tit