elaboration of the most elegant patterns. Many will declare that it is
utterly incredible that a female bird should be able to appreciate fine
shading and exquisite patterns. It is undoubtedly a marvellous fact
that she should possess this almost human degree of taste. He who
thinks that he can safely gauge the discrimination and taste of the
lower animals may deny that the female Argus pheasant can appreciate
such refined beauty; but he will then be compelled to admit that the
extraordinary attitudes assumed by the male during the act of
courtship, by which the wonderful beauty of his plumage is fully
displayed, are purposeless; and this is a conclusion which I for one
will never admit.
Although so many pheasants and allied gallinaceous birds carefully
display their plumage before the females, it is remarkable, as Mr.
Bartlett informs me, that this is not the case with the dull-coloured
Eared and Cheer pheasants (Crossoptilon auritum and Phasianus
wallichii); so that these birds seem conscious that they have little
beauty to display. Mr. Bartlett has never seen the males of either of
these species fighting together, though he has not had such good
opportunities for observing the Cheer as the Eared pheasant. Mr. Jenner
Weir, also, finds that all male birds with rich or
strongly-characterised plumage are more quarrelsome than the
dull-coloured species belonging to the same groups. The goldfinch, for
instance, is far more pugnacious than the linnet, and the blackbird
than the thrush. Those birds which undergo a seasonal change of plumage
likewise become much more pugnacious at the period when they are most
gaily ornamented. No doubt the males of some obscurely-coloured birds
fight desperately together, but it appears that when sexual selection
has been highly influential, and has given bright colours to the males
of any species, it has also very often given a strong tendency to
pugnacity. We shall meet with nearly analogous cases when we treat of
mammals. On the other hand, with birds the power of song and brilliant
colours have rarely been both acquired by the males of the same
species; but in this case the advantage gained would have been the
same, namely success in charming the female. Nevertheless it must be
owned that the males of several brilliantly coloured birds have had
their feathers specially modified for the sake of producing
instrumental music, though the beauty of this cannot be compared, at
least according to our taste, with that of the vocal music of many
songsters.
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