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Show 44 SEXUAL SELECTION: "BIRDS. P.A.ttT II. The males of many gallinaceous birds, especially of the polygamous kinds, £tre furnished with special weapons for fighting with their rivals, namely spurs, which can be used with fearful effect. It has been reconled by a trustworthy writer IL that in Derbyshire a kite struck at a game-hen accompanied by her chickens when the cock rushed to the rescue and drove his sput: right through tha eye and skull of the aggressor. The spur was with difficulty drawn from the skull, and as the kite though dead retained his grasp, the two birds were ftrrnl y locked together ; but the cock when disentangled was very little injured. The invincible courage of tho game-cock is notorious : a gentleman who long ago witnessed the following brutal scene, told me that a bird bad both its legs broken by some accident in the cock-pit, and the owner laid a wager that if the legs could be spliced so that the bird could stand upright, he would continue fighting. This was effected on the spot, and the bircl fought with unuaunted courage until he received his deathstroke. In Ceylon a closely-allied and wild species, the Gallus Stanleyi, is known to fight desperately "in " defence of his seraglio," so that one of the combatants is frequently found dead.12 An Indian partridge (O?·t!)go'mis gularis), tho male of which is furnished with strong and sbarp spurs, is so quanelsomo, "that the " scars of former fights disfigure the breast of almost " every bird you kill." 13 The males of almost all gallinaceous birds, even those which are not furnished with spurs, engage during the breeding-season in fierce confliets. The Capercailzie and 11 Mr. Hewitt in tho' Poultry Dook by Togotmeier,' 1866, p. lSi. 12 Layurd, 'Annals nnd Mng. of Nat. lii:;t.' vol. :x.iv. 1854, p. 63. 13 Jeruon, 'Dirds of Indin,' vol. iii. p. 574. C!IAP. XIII. LAW OF BATTLE. 45 Black-cock (Tetrao urogallus and T. tetrix), which are bot~ polygamists, have regular appointed places, where durmg many weeks they congregate in numbers to fight together and to display their charms before the females. M. W. Kowalevsky informs me that in Hussia he has seen the snow all bloody on the arenas where the Capercailzie have fought; aud the Black-cocks " make the feathers fly in every direction," when several " engage in a battle royal." '!'he elder Brehm gives a curious account of the Balz, as the love-danee ancllo:e-song of the Black-eock is called in G~rmany. The bn·cl utters almost continuously the most stranae noises : " he holds his tail up and spreads it out likeb a "' fan, he lifts up his head and neck with all the feathers " erect, and stretches his wings from the body. Then " he takes a few jumps in different directions some,, times in a circle, and presses the under part of his " beak so bard against the ground that the chin-feathers :: m:e n:bbed off. During these movements he beats h1s wmgs and turns round and round. The more '' ardent he ?rows the more lively he becomes, until at "' last .the bn·d appears like a fi·antic creature." At snch times the black-cocks are so absorbed that they become almost blind and deaf, but less so than the capercailzie: hence bird after bird may be shot on the same spot, or even caught by the hand. After performing these ant~cs tho males begin to fight : and the same black-cock, m order to prove his strcnath over ~everal antagonists, will visit in the conrse of onbe mornmg several Balz-places, which remain the same dm·ina successive years.14 '? ~· Drcbm, 'lllust. Thicrleben,' 18G7, n. iv. s. 351. Some of tho fore~ omg statements nrc tnkon from L. Lloyd, 'The Gnmr. Dirds of ~wcden,' &c., 18G7, p. 70. |