But we must not judge the tastes of distinct species by a uniform standard; nor must we judge by the standard of man’s taste. Even with man, we should remember what discordant noises, the beating of tom-toms and the shrill notes of reeds, please the ears of savages. Sir S. Baker remarks,[115] that “as the stomach of the Arab prefers the raw meat and reeking liver taken hot from the animal, so does his ear prefer his equally coarse and discordant music to all other.” _Love-Antics and Dances._—The curious love-gestures of various birds, especially of the Gallinaceæ, have already been incidentally noticed; so that little need here be added. In Northern America, large numbers of a grouse, the _Tetrao phasianellus_, meet every morning during the breeding-season on a selected level spot, and here they run round and round in a circle of about fifteen or twenty feet in diameter, so that the ground is worn quite bare, like a fairy-ring. In these Partridge-dances, as they are called by the hunters, the birds assume the strangest attitudes, and run round, some to the left and some to the right. Audubon describes the males of a heron (_Ardea herodias_) as walking about on their long legs with great dignity before the females, bidding defiance to their rivals. With one of the disgusting carrion-vultures (_Cathartes jota_) the same naturalist states that “the gesticulations and parade of the males at the beginning of the love-season are extremely ludicrous.” Certain birds perform their love-antics on the wing, as we have seen with the black African weaver, instead of on the ground. During the spring our little white-throat (_Sylvia cinerea_) often rises a few feet or yards in the air above some bush, and “flutters with a fitful and fantastic motion, singing all the while, and then drops to its perch.” The great English bustard throws himself into indescribably odd attitudes whilst courting the female, as has been figured by Wolf. An allied Indian bustard (_Otis bengalensis_) at such times “rises perpendicularly into the air with a hurried flapping of his wings, raising his crest and puffing out the feathers of his neck and breast, and then drops to the ground;” he repeats this manœuvre several times successively, at the same time humming in a peculiar tone. Such females as happen to be near “obey this saltatory summons,” and when they approach he trails his wings and spreads his tail like a turkey-cock.[116]