In Patagonia I found that several of the birds
with good voices--one a mocking bird--were, like the robin at home,
autumn and winter songsters.
The argument has been stated very binefly: but little would be gained by
the mere multiplication of instances, since, however many, they would bo
selected instances--from a single district, it is true, while those in
the _Descent of Man_ were brought together from an immeasurably wider
field; but the principle is the same in both cases, and to what I have
written it may be objected that, if, instead of twenty-five, I had given
a hundred cases, taking them as they came, they might have shown a
larger proportion of instances like that of the cow-bird, in which the
male has a set performance practised only during the love-season and in
the presence of the female.
It is, no doubt, true that all collections of facts relating to animal
life present nature to us somewhat as a "fantastic realm"--unavoidably
so, in a measure, since the writing would be too bulky, or too dry, or
too something inconvenient, if we did not take only the most prominent
facts that come before us, remove them from their places, where alone
they can be seen in their proper relations to numerous other less
prominent facts, and rearrange them patch work-wise to make up our
literature. But I am convinced that any student of the subject who will
cast aside his books--supposing that they have not already bred a habit
in his mind of seeing only "in accordance with verbal statement"--and go
directly to nature to note the actions of animals for himself--actions
which, in many cases, appear to lose all significance when set down in
writing--the result of such independent investigation will be a
conviction that conscious sexual selection on the part of the female is
not the cause of music and dancing performances in birds, nor of the
brighter colours and ornaments that distinguish the male.
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