of a quite formal and non-courting nature, and, though I will not here try to indicate the steps by which the female bird might gradually enter into the dance-movements or the song, they do not seem to me impossible to conceive of. The number of performers, however, having once become fixed, would be likely to continue, through habit, as long as no other influence arose to affect it.
The fact that it was in the early days of July, when the true courting-season should have been over, that I witnessed these movements, may perhaps strengthen the above view.
In seeking to explain such performances as those of the spur-winged lapwing in this latter way, one must assume the number of three birds to have originated in accordance with general principles, and that first there has been a real courtship of the female bird by two males, the antics proper to which have, at last, become stereotyped into a formal dance or display. This, however, would not exclude the possibility of what I have suggested in the case of the dabchicks and common peewit, and I believe myself that it is not by one only, but by many causes, that the many curious antics of birds are to be explained.
