Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/848

828 it is true of the gemmeous dragonet and of the butterfly gurnard, of the peacock and the humming-bird, of the bird-of-paradise and the argus pheasant, of the perfume of the musk-deer and the antlers of the stag, of the lion's mane and the monkeys' beards, crests, and gorgets. All alike are assumed for the self-same purpose, and all are useful merely to charm the fickle senses of the proverbially coyer and more uncertain sex.

The stickleback has acquired his gorgeous wedding-garb, in accordance with a general law of animal life, in order to please and attract to himself the attention of his aesthetic and fastidious mates. "After the breeding-season," says Mr. Darwin, "these colors all change, the throat and belly become of a paler red, the back more green, and the glowing tints subside." Moreover, as usually happens in the case of all highly decorated animals, your stickleback further resembles Solomon in being a most undisguised polygamist in the natural state; and his brilliant hues have, no doubt, been developed to charm and draw to his side as many as possible of the female fish. Polygamous animals, in other words, are always handsome, because only the handsomest succeed in attracting to themselves a harem, and so handing on their peculiarities to future generations. Furthermore, the sticklebacks are all great fighters; and it may be broadly laid down once more as a general principle of animal life, and at the same time a contribution to the theory of tittlebats, that all very handsome and decorated creatures are naturally pugnacious of disposition. Thus stags fight one another with their branching antlers for the possession of the does. Salmon constantly join battle and tear one another to pieces savagely on the recognized spawning-beds. The polygamous ruff, distinguished from his sober-suited mate the reeve by his curious crest, and by the great collar of plumes from which his name is taken, is as full of the Homeric joy of battle as a game-cock, and quite as gamy. The wild Sumatran ancestor of our own barn-door fowl "does battle in defense of his seraglio till one of the combatants drops down dead." Blackcock and capercailzie assemble annually at regular tournaments, to fight one another, and display their beauty before their expectant and undecided dames; and on such occasions Kovalevsky has seen the snow of their arenas in Russia all red with blood, and covered with the torn-out feathers of the champions. Most of the handsomest birds and animals, indeed, are provided with special weapons for these fierce encounters, such as the spurs of game-birds, the horns of antelopes, the antlers of stags, the tusks of the musk-deer, the wing-darts of the palamedia, and the fierce spiny fins of the most decorative fishes. Even the dainty little humming-birds themselves are prodigious fighters, and I have seen them engaging; one another in their aërial battles with the utmost pluck, vigor, and endurance. Furthermore, beauty in animals is almost always accompanied, as Dr. Günther has observed, by a very hasty and irritable temper.