Page:Territory in Bird Life by Henry Eliot Howard (London, John Murray edition).djvu/229

Rh varying conditions of existence. But before we proceed to examine the particular ways in which it has been modified to suit the needs of particular classes of species, and the reason for such modifications, we must inquire whether there is not some way in which it has been serviceable alike to every species, or at least to a large majority of them.

Success in the attainment of reproduction depends upon the successful discharge of the sexual function; and the discharge of the sexual function depends primarily upon an individual of one sex coming into contact with one of the opposite sex at the appropriate season and when its appropriate organic condition arises. Now the power of locomotion is so highly developed in birds that it may seem unreasonable to suppose that males and females would have any difficulty in meeting when their inherited nature required that they should do so, still less reasonable to suggest that this power might even act as a hindrance to successful mating. Nevertheless, if we try to picture to ourselves the conditions which would obtain if the movements of both sexes were in no wise controlled, and mating were solely dependent upon fortuitous gatherings, we shall come. I fancy, to no other conclusion than that much loss of valuable time and needless waste of energy would often be incurred in the search, and that many an individual would fail to breed just because its wanderings took it into districts in which, at the time, there happened