fish the males put on brighter colors in the spring, and surely this cannot be to win the females, as there is no proper mating among them.

The odd forms and bizarre colors that so often prevail among birds, more especially tropical and semi-tropical birds, and among insects, suggest fashions among men, capricious, fantastic, gaudy, often grotesque, and having no direct reference to the needs of the creatures possessing them. They are clearly the riot and overflow of the male sexual principle the carnival of the nuptial and breeding impulse. The cock or sham nests of the male wrens seem to be the result of the excess and overflow of the same principle.

It is not, therefore, in my view of the case, female selection that gives the males their bright plumage, but the inborn tendency of the masculine principle to riot and overplus. There is, strictly speaking, no wooing, no courtship, among the four-footed beasts, and yet the badges of masculinity, manes, horns, tusks, pride, pugnacity, are as pronounced here as are the male adornments among the fowls of the air.

Why, among the polygamous species of birds, are the males so much more strongly marked than among the monogamous? Why, but as a result of the superabundance and riot of the male sexual principle? In some cases among the quadrupeds it even greatly increases the size of the males over the females, as among the polygamous fur seals.

Darwin came very near to the key of the problem that engaged him, when he said that the reason why the male has been the more modified in those cases where the sexes differ in external appearance is that "the males of almost all animals have stronger passions than the females."

"In mankind, and even as low down in the scale as in the Lepidoptera, the temperature of the body is higher in the male than in the female." (Darwin.)

If the female refuses the male, it is not because he does not fill her eye or arouse her admiration, but because the mating instinct is not yet ripe. Among nearly all our birds the males fairly thrust themselves upon the females, and carry them by storm. This may be seen almost any spring day in the squabbles of the English sparrows along the street. The female appears to resist all her suitors, defending herself against them by thrusting spitefully right and left, and just what decides her finally to mate with any one of them is a puzzle. It may be stated as a general rule that all females are reluctant or negative, and all males are eager or positive, and that the male wins, not through the taste of the female, her love for bright colors and ornamental appendages, but through the dominance of his own masculinity. He is the stronger force, he is aggressive and persuasive, and finally kindles her with his own breeding instinct.

Even among creatures so low in the scale of life

as the crab, the males of certain species, during the breeding season, dance and gyrate about the females, assuming many grotesque postures and behaving as if intoxicated-as, indeed, they are, with the breeding passion.

Evidently the female crab does not prefer one male over another, but mates with the one that offers himself, as soon as he has excited her to the mating point. And I have no proof that among the birds the female ever shows preference for one male over another; she must be won, of course, and she is won when the male has sufficiently aroused her; she does not choose a mate, but accepts one at the right time. I have seen two male bluebirds fight for hours over a female, while she sat and looked on indifferently. And I have seen two females fight over a male, while he sat and looked on with equal indifference. "Either will suit, but I want but one."

Of course Nature does not work as man works. Our notions of prudence, of precision, of rule and measure, are foreign to her ways. The stakes are hers, whoever wins. She works by no inflexible system or plan, she is spontaneous and variable every moment. She heaps the measure, or she scants the measure, and it is all one to her. Our easy explanations of her ways- how often they leave us where they found us! The balance of life upon the globe is fairly well maintained by checks and

counter-checks, by some species being prolific and other species less so, by the development of assimilative colors by one kind, and of showy colors by another, by slow but ceaseless modifications and adaptations. It is a problem of many and complex factors, in which, no doubt, color plays its part, but I believe this part is a minor one.

NOTE.-Since writing the above essay I have read Geddes and Thomson on "The Evolution of Sex," and find that these investigators have anticipated my main idea in regard to the high coloration and ornamentation of male birds, namely that these things inhere in the male principle, or are “natural to maleness." The males put on more beauty than females "because they are males, and not primarily for any other reason whatever." "Bright coloring or rich pigmentation is more characteristic of the male than of the female constitution." Males are stronger, handsomer, or more emotional simply because they are males, - i. e., of more active physiological habit than their mates." The males tend to live at a loss, and are relatively more katabolic; the females, on the other hand, tend to live at a profit, and are relatively more anabolic.

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"Brilliancy of color, exuberance of hair and feathers, activity of scent-glands, and even the development of weapons, cannot be satisfactorily explained by sexual selection alone, for this is merely a secondary factor. In origin and continued development they are outcrops of a male as opposed to a female constitution."

VI

STRAIGHT SEEING AND STRAIGHT

THINKING

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66

I

NEWSPAPER correspondent the other day asked me what I meant by truth in natural history. "We know that no two persons see alike,” he said, or see the same things; behold the disagreements in the testimony of eye-witnesses to the same occurrences." "True," I replied; "but when two persons shoot at a mark, they must see alike if they are both to hit the mark, and two witnesses to a murder or a robbery must agree substantially in their testimony if they expect to be credited in the court-room.' In like manner, two observers in the field of natural history must in the main agree in their statements of fact if their observations are to have any scientific value. Notwithstanding it is true that we do not all see the same things when we go to the fields and woods, there is such a thing as accurate seeing, and there is such a thing as inaccurate seeing and reporting.

By truth in natural history I can mean only that which is verifiable; that which others may see under like conditions, or which accords with the observa