Page:Territory in Bird Life by Henry Eliot Howard (London, John Murray edition).djvu/161

Rh seemed so perplexing and meaningless becomes a factor of prime importance. First of all the male arrives; then it establishes itself in a small alder bush and advertises its presence by song; next, by persistent effort in attacking the neighbouring males, it frees a piece of ground from their dominion; and finally, in proper sequence, a female arrives, pairing takes place, and reproduction is secured.

How then does the whole matter stand? If it were males only that engaged in serious conflict, and if they fought only in the presence of a female, the problem would resolve itself into one simply of obtaining mates. But the warfare extends in a variety of directions, it is not confined to one sex, nor to unpaired individuals, nor need the opponents necessarily be of the same sex; it involves both sexes alike singly or combined. Now the view that the biological end of battle is, in its primary aspect, related to the female, cannot, as we have seen, apply to the conflicts between different pairs, and only by much stretching of the imagination can it be held responsible for the hostility that males frequently display towards females or vice versa. It is valid only for a certain form of warfare. But that form represents, you will say, a large proportion of the whole, which is true; and so long as we ignore the remainder, we might rest content in the belief that we had solved the major part of the problem. But can we ignore the remainder? Can we say that the conflicts between paired males, for example, are