not the rule, and probably never occurs at all. But,” he adds, “is it not still a choice, though unconscious, when the female turns to the singer whose voice, whether from strength or modulation, proves most attractive? Even if the song is primarily a means of recognition or an invitation from the male, still the psychological effect must be that the female follows the songster that excites her most, and so exerts a kind of unconscious selection.” The phrase “unconscious choice” is, however, somewhat unsatisfactory, especially when we remember that it is used to indicate the result of a direct appeal to the conscious situation. If, however, we say that it is perceptual choice arising from impulse as distinguished from ideational choice due to motive and volition, we see that the distinction is in line with that which we have drawn again and again, and which Dr. Stout so well emphasizes in his “Manual of Psychology.” But we have also drawn the distinction between instinctive behaviour prior to individual experience, and intelligent behaviour the result of such experience. Under which of these classes does the behaviour of the female during courtship fall? Professor Groos, in the further development of his hypothesis, seems to place it in the instinctive category. “Instead of a conscious or unconscious choice, of which we know nothing certain,” he says,[154] “we have the need of overcoming instinctive coyness in the female, a fact familiar enough, but hitherto not sufficiently accounted for. Then the question no longer is, which among many males will be chosen by the female, but which one has the qualities that can overcome the reluctance of the female whom he woos. Sexual selection would then become a special case of natural selection.” I am unable to follow Professor Groos in this view, which I find it rather difficult to reconcile with such statements as that already quoted, in which he says that the female’s “tantalizing change from allurement to resistance seems to include an element of a mischievous playfulness.” It is more probable that instinctive coyness and reluctance afford the conditions under which experience of the pleasures of courtship may be gained. It is said that a flirt, when taken to task for her conduct at ball and picnic, justified it by asking demurely how else she was to gain that wide experience of men which was absolutely necessary to guide her in exercising a wise and becoming choice. Let us hope that when the fateful time arrived she acted with due deliberation. Now the coquetry of birds affords the opportunity of gaining just such experience in the light of which a perceptual choice may be made.