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character. All those who have attended to the subject, believe that there is the severest rivalry between the males of many species to
by
the females. The rock-thrush of Guiana, birds of
and some others, congregate; and successive males display
→their
gorgeous
perform strange antics before the females,
standing by as spectators, at last choose the most attractive partner. Those who have closely attended to birds in confinement well know that they often take individual preferences and
thus Sir R. Heron has described how
pied peacock was eminently attractive to all his hen birds. ↑ →It may appear childish to attribute any effect to such apparently weak means: I
cannot here enter on the
necessary
→to support this view;
but if man can in a short time give
→elegant carriage and beauty
to his bantams, according to his standard of beauty, I can see no good reason to doubt that female birds, by selecting, during thousands of generations, the most melodious or beautiful males, according to their standard of beauty, might produce a marked effect.
→I strongly suspect that
well-known
with respect to the plumage of male and female birds, in comparison with the plumage of the young, can
→be explained on the view of plumage having been chiefly modified by
sexual
acting when the birds have come to the breeding age or during the breeding season; the modifications thus produced being inherited at corresponding ages or seasons, either by the males alone, or by the males and females; but I have not space here to enter on this subject.
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