Page:Territory in Bird Life by Henry Eliot Howard (London, John Murray edition).djvu/225

Rh faculties, there is at the same time evidence which demonstrates that such variations exercise no influence on the course of mating; and inasmuch as it is difficult to conceive of any voice departing more from the normal type in these particular qualities than the immature does from the adult, if there be degrees of suggestive influence, we must seek it in some other direction. There remain the two other characteristics which we found to be constant under all circumstances, namely, loudness and specific distinctness; and if, in addition to serving the purpose of disclosing the positions of the males, they serve to evoke some emotion in the female, which helps to further the biological end of mating, so much the more reason is there for their survival.

There can be no question that this ingenious and attractive theory, if it were true in its special application to song, would immensely simplify interpretation, and moreover that preferential mating would contribute not a little to the success of the whole territorial system. No one can deny the strength of the argument: that the sexual instinct, like all other instincts, must require a stimulus of an appropriate kind; that the effect of the sexual call upon the female cannot be neutral; and hence the probability that stimulation varies too; no one. I say, can question the strength of this evidence, and, one might add, of the evidence derived from the analogy of the human voice. But