Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/560

544 that the ardor of the male can be stimulated by indifference and inflamed to fury by resistance, prompts the female to practice all the arts of coquetry, of which Mantegazza says: "No woman can surpass the wonderful refinement with which a female canary-bird will offer a seeming of opposition to the passion of the male. All the numerous arts with which the world of women can conceal a 'yes' under a 'no' are as nothing compared with the arrant coquetry, the dissembled efforts to escape, the snappings and bitings, and the thousand tricks of the females of animals." Brehm says that the male finds in the female those desirable and attractive qualities that are wanting in himself. He seeks the opposite to himself with the force of a chemical element. A loud singing by the female would be as unpleasant to him as a beard on the face of a woman would be to a man. According to an Eastern proverb, man makes love with his speech, woman by her attitude and bearing. Among the feathered races, whose love-life is more largely and intensively developed than that of any other of the families of animals, the female perceives, feels, and knows that a discreet graciousness, a quiet power, and unobtrusive yet expressive, tender, and gentle manifestations, are attractions that operate irresistibly upon the male, and she therefore adopts them in her demeanor toward her suitor. Toussenel remarks: "Song is also given to the female; and, if she makes no use of the faculty, it is because she knows how to do more and better than to sing. She, as well as her brother, has gone through a course of music in her youth, and has cultivated her taste with the years. This cultivation, in fact, filled a need of both birds, for through it the female has become qualified to appreciate the charm of the elegies that are to be sighed out to her, and to award to the most worthy minstrel the prize for his song. The females know well enough how to express themselves in the language of passion when fancy inspires them to it or solitude condemns them to it." Fischer says that female birds begin at the same time with the males to twitter in the first practice of song, although they never pass beyond the stage of blundering at it. Bechstein remarks that the females of the canary bird, bull-finch, robin, and lark utter a melodious song, particularly in widowhood. Darwin suggests that in some of these cases of female songsters the habit of singing may be ascribed to the fact that the birds are so well cared for and are captive; for such conditions are most likely to disturb all the functions connected with reproduction. Numerous examples have been mentioned of the partial transmission of secondary characteristics of the male to the female; and it is not, therefore, very surprising to find that the females of a few species also possess a fully developed and active faculty of singing. I will only add to these facts that even for a repressed exercise, and with a restricted muscular activity, a force and a proper organ are requisite, and that therefore the gently modulated, muffled sounds, the peeping, whispering, clucking, smacking, and cooing, with which the females respond