But we need not travel so far as Brazil to find examples of displays of this kind. Among the birds of our own Islands we can find many close parallels. The chaffinch and the goldfinch, when seeking to arouse the sympathy of their mates make much play with their wings, not only in short "nuptial flights," designed, apparently, to display the conspicuous and brilliant colouring of the plumage as a whole, but when perched on some convenient spray. At such times the wing is more or less completely spread out, as if to reveal, to the fullest possible advantage, the bright bars and splashes of colour which this extension alone can bring into being. Since these gaily coloured vestments seemed always to be associated with striking, stilted, attitudes, sometimes bordering on the grotesque, and always to be paraded in the presence of the female, Darwin drew the inference that they were the outcome of female choice persistently exercised during long generations. That is to say he held that, far back in the history of the race, these performers were soberly clad, as their mates commonly are. Then certain of the males of these now resplendent species began to develop patches of colour, small at first, but gradually increasing, generation by generation, in area and intensity. This progressive splendour, he believed, was due to the "selective" action of the females, which, from the very first, chose from among their suitors those who stood out among their fellows by reason of their brighter plumage. Thus the duller coloured males died without offspring. On this assumption each succeeding generation would be, in some slight degree, brighter than the last, until the process of transformation ended in the glorified creatures we so admire to-day.