Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 5 (1901).djvu/373

Rh water for a little, then swim together to the nest, and, keeping them perfectly distinct through the glasses, I can say with conviction that it is the male who again, now, leaps up, makes the pose, and assumes the final attitude so often mentioned. The female now acts as before for a little, but on—I think—the first return after swimming a short distance out, springs up, and pairing takes place, she performing, as far as attitude and relative position are concerned—absolutely as far as the eye is capable of detecting—the function and office of the male. Immediately after the pairing she comes forward along the body of the male—on which (as in every case upon either side) she stands perfectly upright—and takes the water, whilst the latter remains on the nest for a little while afterwards before coming down and following her—for she has now swum away. As just before in the ascent, the glasses again say decidedly that it is the male that has descended last from the nest, and the female that has come off before and swum away. The difference in size between the two is very apparent, and if we say (as anyone seeing this morning's drama alone would say) that the larger bird is the female, then I have seen this very bird act last year, time and time again, as the male, whilst the other (which we must in that case suppose to be the male) acted, in the pairing process, the usual part of the female. It must also be remembered that, although last year the transmutation of sexes—as we may call it—between the two birds was not carried by the female to this extreme point, yet up to this point, and in every other particular I saw each of them assume, alternately, and in more or less immediate succession, the character proper to the other. Personally, therefore, I have no further doubt as to this salient peculiarity (for as such it strikes me) in the sexual relations of these Grebes, and, as I can see nothing here, in the shape of artificial conditions, to suggest its being an individual one (or, rather, an idiosyncrasy shared by two individuals), I suppose it to be specific. If so, that vitiation of the sexual instincts in domesticated birds to which Darwin may perhaps allude ('The Descent of Man,' p. 415) may not really be due to artificial conditions, but natural, in the ordinary sense of the word; for, of course, in a larger sense, everything is, and must be, natural, a fact not sufficiently appreciated by those who, in their investigations—or rather, let us say, their