during the breeding-season, and perform for hours their graceful evolutions. Large numbers of the Solitary snipe (_Scolopax major_) assemble during the dusk in a morass; and the same place is frequented for the same purpose during successive years; here they may be seen running about “like so many large rats,” puffing out their feathers, flapping their wings, and uttering the strangest cries.[149] Some of the above-mentioned birds, namely, the black-cock, capercailzie, pheasant-grouse, the ruff, the Solitary snipe, and perhaps some others, are, as it is believed, polygamists. With such birds it might have been thought that the stronger males would simply have driven away the weaker, and then at once have taken possession of as many females as possible; but if it be indispensable for the male to excite or please the female, we can understand the length of the courtship and the congregation of so many individuals of both sexes at the same spot. Certain species which are strictly monogamous likewise hold nuptial assemblages; this seems to be the case in Scandinavia with one of the ptarmigans, and their leks last from the middle of March to the middle of May. In Australia the lyre-bird or _Menura superba_ forms “small round hillocks,” and the _M. Alberti_ scratches for itself shallow holes, or, as they are called by the natives, _corroborying places_, where it is believed both sexes assemble. The meetings of the _M. superba_ are sometimes very large; and an account has lately been published[150] by a traveller, who heard in a valley beneath him, thickly covered with scrub, “a din which completely astonished” him; on crawling onwards he beheld to his amazement about one hundred and fifty of the magnificent lyre-cocks, “ranged in order of battle, and fighting with indescribable fury.” The bowers of the Bower-birds are the resort of both sexes during the breeding-season; and “here the males meet and contend with each other for the favours of the female, and here the latter assemble and coquet with the males.” With two of the genera, the same bower is resorted to during many years.[151]