into a melodious love song. In the case of the modified feathers, by
which the drumming, whistling, or roaring noises are produced, we know
that some birds during their courtship flutter, shake, or rattle their
unmodified feathers together; and if the females were led to select the
best performers, the males which possessed the strongest or thickest,
or most attenuated feathers, situated on any part of the body, would be
the most successful; and thus by slow degrees the feathers might be
modified to almost any extent. The females, of course, would not notice
each slight successive alteration in shape, but only the sounds thus
produced. It is a curious fact that in the same class of animals,
sounds so different as the drumming of the snipe s tail, the tapping of
the woodpecker s beak, the harsh trumpet-like cry of certain
water-fowl, the cooing of the turtle-dove, and the song of the
nightingale, should all be pleasing to the females of the several
species. But we must not judge of the tastes of distinct species by a
uniform standard; nor must we judge by the standard of man s taste.
Even with man, we should remember what discordant noises, the beating
of tom-toms and the shrill notes of reeds, please the ears of savages.
Sir S. Baker remarks (58. The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia, 1867, p.
203.), that as the stomach of the Arab prefers the raw meat and
reeking liver taken hot from the animal, so does his ear prefer his
equally coarse and discordant music to all other.
LOVE ANTICS AND DANCES.
The curious love gestures of some birds have already been incidentally
noticed; so that little need here be added. In Northern America large
numbers of a grouse, the Tetrao phasianellus, meet every morning during
the breeding-season on a selected level spot, and here they run round
and round in a circle of about fifteen or twenty feet in diameter, so
that the ground is worn quite bare, like a fairy-ring. In these
Partridge-dances, as they are called by the hunters, the birds assume
the strangest attitudes, and run round, some to the left and some to
the right. Audubon describes the males of a heron (Ardea herodias) as
walking about on their long legs with great dignity before the females,
bidding defiance to their rivals. With one of the disgusting
carrion-vultures (Cathartes jota) the same naturalist states that the
gesticulations and parade of the males at the beginning of the
love-season are extremely ludicrous. Certain birds perform their
love-antics on the wing, as we have seen with the black African weaver,
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