and this musical gift by the approbation of Mrs. Robert, as Darwin,
with his sexual selection principle, would have us believe, then
there must have been a time when the females of this tribe were not
quite so chary of their favors as they are now. Indeed, I never
knew a female bird of any kind that did not appear utterly
indifferent to the charms of voice and plumage that the male birds
are so fond of displaying. But I am inclined to believe that the
males think only of themselves and of outshining each other, and
not at all of the approbation of their mates, as, in an analogous
case in a higher species, it is well known whom the females dress
for, and whom they want to kill with envy!

I know of no other song-bird that expresses so much self-
consciousness and vanity, and comes so near being an ornithological
coxcomb. The red-bird, the yellowbird, the indigo-bird, the oriole,
the cardinal grosbeak, and others, all birds of brilliant plumage
and musical ability, seem quite unconscious of self, and neither by
tone nor act challenge the admiration of the beholder.

By the time the bobolink reaches the Potomac, in September, he has
degenerated into a game-bird that is slaughtered by tens of
thousands in the marshes. I think the prospects now are of his
gradual extermination, as gunners and sportsmen are clearly on the
increase, while the limit of the bird's productivity in the North
has no doubt been reached long ago. There are no more meadows to be
added to his domain there, while he is being waylaid and cut off
more and more on his return to the South. It is gourmand eat
gourmand, until in half a century more I expect the blithest and
merriest of our meadow songsters will have disappeared before the
rapacity of human throats.