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But the most curious case is afforded by three allied genera of Australian birds, the famous Bower-birds, no doubt the co-descendants of some ancient species which first acquired the strange instinct of constructing bowers for performing their love-antics. Both sexes assist in the erection of the bowers, but the male is the principal workman.

On the ornamented nests of humming-birds, Gould, 'Introduction to the Trochilidae, 1861, p. 19. On the bower-birds, Gould, 'Handbook to the Birds of Australia, 1865, vol. i. pp. 444-461. Having made these preliminary remarks on the discrimination and taste of birds, I will give all the facts known to me which bear on the preference shewn by the female for particular males.

Botocudos, mode of life of; disfigurement of the ears and lower lip of the. Boucher de Perthes, J.C. de, on the antiquity of man. Bourbon, proportion of the sexes in a species of Papilio from. Bourien on the marriage-customs of the savages of the Malay Archipelago. Bovidae, dewlaps of. Bower-birds, habits of the; ornamented playing-places of. Bows, use of.

Now and then a pretty feather is intertwined or fastened to the outer sides, the stem being always so placed that the feather stands out beyond the surface." The best evidence, however, of a taste for the beautiful is afforded by the three genera of Australian bower-birds already mentioned.

Such are the so-called brush turkeys and mound builders, the only feathered things that never sit upon their own eggs, but allow them to be hatched, after the fashion of reptiles, by the heat of the sand or of fermenting vegetable matter. The piping crows, the honey-suckers, the lyre-birds, and the more-porks are all peculiar to the Australian region. So are the wonderful and æsthetic bower-birds.

In this species, as among other Bower-birds, the bowers are not the labour and the property of a single couple; they are the result of the collaboration of several households, who come together to shelter themselves there.

As we shall see later, the nests of humming-birds, and the playing passages of bower-birds are tastefully ornamented with gaily- coloured objects; and this shews that they must receive some kind of pleasure from the sight of such things. With the great majority of animals, however, the taste for the beautiful is confined, as far as we can judge, to the attractions of the opposite sex.

There are such things as Courting-dances, when the mature male and female go through a ritual together not only in civilized ball-rooms and the back-parlors of inns, but in the farmyards where the rooster pays his addresses to the hen, or the yearling bull to the cow with quite recognized formalities; there are elaborate ceremonials performed by the Australian bower-birds and many other animals.

Certain Australian birds, notably the Bower-birds, build themselves covered walks, or playhouses, with interwoven twigs, and decorate the two entrances to the portico by strewing the threshold with anything that they can find in the shape of glittering, polished, or bright-coloured objects.

It is one of those old, old towns which impress one as a continuation and outgrowth of nature, as much as the nests of the bower-birds or the winding galleries of the white ants; a town which carries the traces of its long growth and history like a millennial tree, and has sprung up and developed in the same spot between the river and the low hill from the time when the Roman legions turned their backs on it from the camp on the hillside, and the long-haired sea-kings came up the river and looked with fierce, eager eyes at the fatness of the land.