Part 8

(1) _Protective Colours._—These “are exceedingly prevalent in nature, comprising those of all the white arctic animals, the sandy-coloured desert forms, and the green birds and insects of tropical forests. It also comprises thousands of cases of special resemblance—of birds to the surroundings of their nests, and especially of insects to the bark, leaves, flowers, or soil on or amid which they dwell. Mammalia, fishes, and reptiles, as well as mollusca, present similar phenomena; and the more the habits of animals are investigated, the more numerous are found to be the cases in which their colours tend to conceal them, either from their enemies or from the creatures they prey upon.”

(2) _Warning Colours._—In this class, on the other hand, the object is not to conceal the animal, but to make it conspicuous. Certain species of gorgeously-coloured butterflies, _e.g._ are never eaten by birds, spiders, lizards, or monkeys, who eagerly feed on other butterflies. “The reason simply is that they are not fit to eat, their juices having a powerful odour and taste that is absolutely disgusting to all these animals. Now we see the reason of their showy colours and slow flight. It is good for them to be seen and recognised, for then they are never molested; but if they did not differ in form and colouring from other butterflies, or if they flew so quickly that their peculiarities could not be easily noticed, they would be captured, and though not eaten, would be maimed or killed.”

Mimicry is the name given to a second and still more marvellous class of Warning Colours. They belong to defenceless creatures which so closely resemble other brightly-coloured but nauseous or dangerous animals that they are mistaken for the latter, and therefore left alone. _E.G._ “Wasps are imitated by moths, and ants by beetles; and even poisonous snakes are mimicked by harmless snakes, and dangerous hawks by defenceless cuckoos.”

(3) _Typically_-coloured animals are those species which are brilliantly coloured in both sexes, “and for whose particular colours we can assign no function or use.” This group “comprises an immense number of showy birds, such as Kingfishers, Barbets, Toucans, Lories, Tits, and Starlings; among insects most of the largest and handsomest butterflies,” etc. “It is a suggestive fact that all the brightly-coloured birds mentioned above build in holes or form covered nests, so that the females do not need that protection during the breeding season which I believe to be one of the chief causes of the dull colour of female birds when their partners are gaily coloured.”

(4) _Sexual Colours_, comprising those cases in which the sexes differ, and with which Darwin’s theory of Sexual Selection is directly concerned. Through no _direct_ fault of his own, Darwin leaves on his readers the impression—which has become almost a commonplace of conversation—that it is the general rule among animals for the males of each species to be more ornamented than the females. The truth is, however, that “with the exception of butterflies, the sexes are almost alike in the great majority of insects. The same is the case in mammals and reptiles; while the chief departure from the rule occurs in birds, though even here in very many cases the law of sexual likeness prevails.”

The reason why I have devoted so much space to Mr. Wallace’s colour theories is to emphasise the truth contained in this last sentence; the fact, namely, that even if Sexual Selection were accepted as an active principle, it would account in only a very limited number of cases for the personal beauty of animals, and the reader of Mr. Wallace’s _Tropical Nature_ and his _Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection_ cannot fail to be convinced that Sexual Selection does not even hold good in this limited number of cases, but that “the primary cause of sexual diversity of colour is the need of protection, repressing in the female those bright colours which are normally produced in both sexes by general laws.”

Incidentally Mr. Wallace mentions as an additional function of colour the fact that it may serve as a _means of recognition_ to the sexes. “This view affords us an explanation of the curious fact that among butterflies the females of closely-allied species in the same locality sometimes differ considerably, while the males are much alike; for, as the males are the swiftest, and by far the highest flyers, and seek out the females, it would evidently be advantageous for them to be able to recognise their true partners at some distance off.”

To me it seems that this function of colour is, next to Protection, its most important object, and that Mr. Wallace does not give it sufficient prominence. He says, in speaking of _Typical Colours_, that we can assign “no function or use for them.” But why should they not serve the sexes as a means of recognition at at a distance? especially as colours can be recognised at a greater distance than forms. Many years before Darwin and Mr. Wallace wrote on this subject, Schopenhauer’s genius anticipated this view of the matter. “The extremely varied and vivid colours of the feathers of tropical birds,” he wrote, “have been explained in a very general way, with reference to their efficient cause, as due to the strong effect of the tropical light. As their final cause I would suggest that these brilliant plumes are the gala uniforms by means of which the species, which are so numerous there and often belonging to the same genus, recognise each other; so that every male finds his female. The same is true of the butterflies of different zones and latitudes” (_Welt als Wille u. V._, ii. 381).

Schopenhauer of course errs in attributing, in his ignorance of Protective, Warning, and other colours, all the hues of birds and butterflies to this agency. But it is probable that whenever colours and other ornaments do not serve for purposes of protection (as _e.g._ the lion’s mane and the horns of beetles, _vide_ _Tropical Nature_, p. 202), they serve the purpose of sexual recognition of species. A case cited by Darwin to prove that quadrupeds take notice of colour, is very suggestive in this connection: “A female zebra would not admit the addresses of a male ass until he was painted so as to resemble a zebra, and then, as John Hunter remarks, she received him very readily.”

It is probable, therefore, that in many cases the unique spots and stripes and colours of animals subserve the special use of facilitating the finding of a partner; and in this way they relate directly to the courtship and Romantic Love of animals. Thus we see how the Love affairs of animals may indirectly affect their Personal Beauty in a way quite different from that suggested by Darwin.

LOVE-CHARMS AND LOVE-CALLS

The same reasoning applies to the music of animals, vocal and instrumental, on which Darwin lays great stress. In his opinion, the music of some male animals serves to charm the females æsthetically, and thus gives to the best musicians special advantages through Sexual Selection. But the instances cited by him hardly warrant this conclusion, and seem rather to point to the inference that the function of animal music is chiefly to facilitate courtship, by making it easy for the females to discover the whereabouts of a male of the same species. The evidence tends to show that it is not the male whose voice is most mellow and melodious that catches the female, but rather the one who is most vigorous and persistent and has the loudest organ. As Jaques says in _As You Like It_: “Sing it: ’tis no matter how it be in tune, so it make noise enough!”

Darwin himself quotes a naturalist’s statement, that “the stridulation produced by some of the _Locustidæ_ is so loud that it can be heard during the night at the distance of a mile;” and such cases as “the drumming of the snipe’s tail, the tapping of the woodpecker’s beak, the harsh, trumpetlike cry of certain water-fowl,” though Darwin tries to dispose of them on the ground of a difference in æsthetic taste, nevertheless incline one to the belief that the music of the forest troubadours is not so much intended to gratify the æsthetic taste of the female as to guide her to the spot where the male awaits her; for, contrary to common opinion, it is the female in these cases that searches for a male and not _vice versâ_. Montagu, for instance, asserts that “males of song-birds and of many others do not in general search for the female, but, on the contrary, their business in spring is to perch on some conspicuous spot, breathing out their full and amorous notes, which, by instinct, _the female knows, and repairs to the spot_ to choose her mate.” And Dr. Hartman, speaking of the American _Cicada septemdecim_, says: “The drums are now heard in all directions. This I believe to be the marital summons from the males. Standing in thick chestnut sprouts about as high as my head, where hundreds were around me, I observed the females coming around the drumming males.” And, says Darwin, “the _spel_ of the blackcock certainly serves as a call to the female, for it has been known to bring four or five females from a distance to a male under confinement; but as the blackcock continues his _spel_ for hours during successive days, and in the case of the capercailzie ‘with an agony of passion,’ we are led to suppose that the females which are present are thus charmed.”

There appears to be no _direct_ evidence, however, that female birds are more _charmed_ by one male than another, and prefer him on account of his superior song, as the theory of Sexual Selection postulates. And when we remember that likewise there is no evidence that birds, etc., are ever influenced in their choice by the superior colours of certain males, and that in fact it is the rule for the female to follow passively the most vigorous and victorious male, we are brought back to the conclusion with which we set out—that it is not the superior songster who wins the female by charming her, but the loudest and most persistent songster, by guiding her to the courting-place.

Darwin himself evidently felt the weakness of his position, for he constantly speaks of “love-charms _or_ love-calls” in the same sentence. Thus, “the true song of most birds and various strange cries are uttered chiefly during the breeding-season, and serve as a charm, _or merely as a call-note_, to the other sex.” Again: “It is often difficult to conjecture whether the many strange cries and notes uttered by male birds during the breeding-season serve as a charm or merely as a call to the female.” The distinction between love “charms” and mere “calls” is of course of the utmost importance. For if male song charms the females and influences them in their choice, we have Sexual-æsthetic-female Selection. But if the male song merely serves as a call to the female and as a sign of species-recognition, then Natural Selection accounts for everything, because the most vigorous, loudest, and most persistent male will have the choice of the most numerous females brought to his side by his musical efforts.

LOVE-DANCES AND DISPLAY

There is one more important link in the chain of Darwin’s reasoning, which must be broken before his theory of Sexual Selection can be regarded as demolished. The mad antics of the blackcock and other birds have been already referred to; and some of the lower animals seem to endeavour to surpass them, as, for example, the male alligator, who strives to attract the attention of the female by splashing and roaring in the water; “swollen to an extent ready to burst, with its head and tail lifted up, he spins or twirls round on the surface of the water, like an Indian chief rehearsing his feats of war.” “To suppose,” says Darwin, “that the females do not appreciate the beauty of the males, is to admit that their splendid decorations, all their pomp and display, are useless; and this is incredible.”

But are there no other ways of accounting for all this “pomp and display”? Certainly, several of them. We have seen that the most vigorous males are those which are most highly ornamented, and that it is the vigour and vivacity of the males that seems to decide the choice of the females where there is any. Now instinct, _i.e._ inherited experience, teaches the female the connection between vigour and display of ornament, and influences her choice accordingly. Again, the males indulge in their display for the purpose of arousing the attention of the passive female. This supposition is rendered the more probable by Darwin’s admission that “we must be cautious in concluding that the wings are spread out solely for display, as some birds do so whose wings are not beautiful.”

A third motive of display is the need of finding an outlet for overflowing nervous energy and excitement. To this Mr. Wallace refers as follows: “At pairing time the male is in a state of excitement and full of exuberant energy. Even unornamented birds flutter their wings or spread them out, erect their tails or crests, and thus give vent to the nervous excitability with which they are overcharged.” “It is not improbable,” he continues,—and this suggests a fourth use of display—"that crests and other erectile feathers may be primarily of use in _frightening away enemies_, since they are generally erected when angry or during combat."

A fifth motive of display is suggested by an analogy furnished by human butterflies and birds of Paradise. Among animals where the sexes differ, it is commonly the male who is adorned the most. With us it is the women. But woman’s fineries are not intended to charm the eyes of men, but to excite one another’s rivalry and envy. Now it seems that male birds, with whose plumes our heartless women are so fond of decking themselves, are guilty of an analogous weakness. They will sometimes display their ornaments, says Darwin, “when not in the presence of the females, as occasionally occurs with grouse at their holy places, and as may be noticed with the peacock; this latter bird, however, evidently wishes for a spectator of some kind, and, as I have often seen, will show off his finery before poultry or even pigs. All naturalists who have closely attended to the habits of birds, whether in a state of nature or under confinement, are unanimously of opinion that the males take delight in displaying their beauty.” And, once more, “with birds of Paradise a dozen or more full-plumaged males congregate in a tree to hold a _dancing-party_, as it is called by the natives; and here they fly about, raise their wings, elevate their exquisite plumes, and make them vibrate; and the whole tree seems, as Mr. Wallace remarks, to be filled with waving plumes.”

But if it be the unanimous opinion of naturalists who have closely studied the habits of birds, “that the males take delight in displaying their beauty,” why should not the females also take pleasure in witnessing this display? Perhaps they do, sometimes; for even Mr. Wallace admits that “the display of the various ornamental appendages of the male during courtship may be attractive” to the female. But there is a world-wide difference between this assertion and the doctrine that the females are so greatly and so constantly influenced by their æsthetic taste that they always prefer among males those that are slightly more beautiful than the others, thus increasing their personal beauty by transmission. This is an assumption unsupported by facts, and rendered unnecessary because Natural Selection accounts for all the phenomena in question.

Admiration of Personal Beauty does not appear, therefore, to enter noticeably into animal love, except in so far as a slight amount of æsthetic taste may be admitted in birds. This taste may be strengthened by the sight of the brilliant masculine ornaments during the season of love being associated with the remembered pleasures of courtship.

Indirectly, however, female animals promote the cause of beauty by preferring the more healthy and vigorous individuals, who are commonly also the most beautiful ones. And is not the same true of females of the human persuasion, who likewise are much less influenced in their choice by the beauty than by the boldness, energy, vivacity, and “manliness” of their suitors? It seems to hold true throughout nature that the female’s Love is weak in the æsthetic element, her taste being little developed and too often neutralised by unconscious utilitarian considerations.

LOVE AMONG SAVAGES

STRANGERS TO LOVE

In passing from animals to human beings we find at first not only no advance in the sexual relations, but a decided retrogression. Among some species of birds, courtship and marriage are infinitely more refined and noble than among the lowest savages; and it is especially in their treatment of females, both before and after mating, that not only birds but all animals show an immense superiority over primitive man; for male animals only fight among themselves, and never maltreat the females.

This anomaly is easily explained. The intellectual power and emotional horizon of animals are limited; but in those directions in which Natural Selection has made them _specialists_, they reach a high degree of development, because inherited experience tends to give to their actions an instinctive or quasi-instinctive precision and certainty. Among primitive men, on the other hand, reason begins to encroach more on instinct, but yet in such a feeble way as to make constant blunders inevitable: thus proving that strong instincts, combined with a limited intellectual plasticity, are a safer guide in life than a more plastic but weak intellect minus the assistance of stereotyped instincts.

If neither intellect nor instinct guide the primitive man to well-regulated marital relations, such as we find among many animals, so again his emotional life is too crude and limited to allow any scope for the domestic affections. Inasmuch as, according to Sir John Lubbock, gratitude, mercy, pity, chastity, forgiveness, humility, are ideas or feelings unknown to many or most savage tribes, we should naturally expect that such a highly-compounded and ethereal feeling as Romantic Love could not exist among them. How could Love dwell in the heart of a savage who baits a fish-hook with the flesh of a child; who eats his wife when she has lost her beauty and the muscular power which enabled her to do all his hard work; who abandons his aged parents, or kills them, and whose greatest delight in life is to kill an enemy slowly amid the most diabolic tortures?

Or how could a primitive girl love a man whose courtship consists in knocking her on the head and carrying her forcibly from her own to his tribe? A man who, after a very brief period of caresses, neglects her, takes perhaps another and younger wife, and reduces the first one to the condition of a slave, refusing to let her eat at his table, throwing her bones and remains, as to a dog, or even driving her away and killing her, if she displeases him? These are extreme cases, but they are not rare; and in a slightly modified form they are found throughout savagedom.

That Love is a sentiment unknown to savages has been frequently noted in the works of anthropologists and tourists. When Ploss remarks that the lowest savages “know as little of marriage relations as animals; still less do they know the feeling we call Love,” he does a great injustice to animals, as those who have read the preceding chapter must admit. Letourneau, in his _Sociologie_, remarks: “Among the Cafres Cousas, according to Lichtenstein, the sentiment of love does not constitute a part of marriage. ‘The idea of love, as we understand it,’ says Du Chaillu, in speaking of a tribe of the Gabon, ‘appears to be unknown to this tribe.’” Monteiro, speaking of the polygamous tribes of Africa, says: “The negro knows not love, affection, or jealousy.... In all the long years I have been in Africa I have never seen a negro manifest the least tenderness for or to a negress.... I have never seen a negro put his arm round a woman’s waist, or give or receive any caress whatever that would indicate the slightest loving regard or affection on either side. They have no words or expressions in their language indicative of affection or love.”

Mr. Spencer, in commenting on this passage, remarks that “This testimony harmonises with testimonies cited by Sir John Lubbock, to the effect that the Hottentots ‘are so cold and indifferent to one another that you would think there was no such thing as love between them’; that among the Koussa Kaffirs there is ‘no feeling of love in marriage’; and that in Yariba, ‘a man thinks as little of taking a wife as of cutting an ear of corn—affection is altogether out of the question.’”

Mr. Winwood Reade, on the other hand, informed Darwin that the West Africans “are quite capable of falling in love, and of forming tender, passionate, and faithful attachments.” And the anthropologist Waitz, speaking of Polynesia, says that “examples of real passionate love are not rare, and on the Fiji Islands it has happened that individuals married against their will have committed suicide; although this has only happened in the higher classes.” Unfortunately in these cases we are left in doubt as to whether the reference is to Conjugal or to Romantic Love; conjugal attachment, being of earlier growth than Romantic Love, because the development of the latter was retarded by the limited opportunities for prolonged Courtship and free Choice.

PRIMITIVE COURTSHIP

In his anxiety to find cases of Romantic Love among North American and other primitive peoples, Waitz is obliged to fall back on legends of Lovers’ Leaps and Maiden Rocks, and on a poem about a South American maiden who committed suicide on her lover’s grave to avoid falling into the hands of the Spaniards. Legends and poems, unfortunately, do not count for much as scientific evidence. At the same time, it would doubtless be incorrect to assert on the strength of some of the authorities just quoted that Love does not exist at all among savages, and therefore to make the chapter on Love among Savages as brief as that chapter on Snakes in Ireland. We shall find, on the contrary, that several of Love’s “overtones” are occasionally present; and that though full-fledged cupids may never appear with their poisoned arrows, mischievous _amourettes_ sometimes do flit across the field of vision. For the goddess of Love is ever watchful of an opportunity for one of her emissaries to bag some game.

Romantic Love is dependent on opportunities for Courtship. Among savages and semi-civilised nations we find three grades of Courtship—Capture, Purchase, and Service. These must be briefly examined in turn.