Finer, destined perhaps for a superior and charming civilization, the birds like combat; sometimes the duel is serious, as in gallinaceæ, cock-fights, often it is a courtesy, a mimicry. The female of the rock-cock of Brazil is tawny and without beauty, the male is yellow-orange, with crest bordered in deep red, the long wing feathers and tail feathers are red-brown. One sees the females ranged in a circle as a crowd about jugglers, the males are strutting, cutting capers, moving their colour-shot feathers, getting themselves admired and desired. From time to time a female admits that she is moved, a couple is formed. But the tetras, heather-cocks of North America, have still more curious customs. Their fights have become exactly what they have with us, that is, dances. It is no longer the tourney, it is the tour-de-valse. What completes the proof that these parades are a survival, a transformation, is that the males, being amused by them, perform them not only before but after coupling. They even practice them for diversion while the females are sitting on the eggs, absorbed in maternal duty. Travellers thus describe the tetras' dance (Milton and Cheaddle, "Atlantic to Pacific," p. 171 of the French translation): "They gather, twenty or thirty in a chosen place, and begin to dance like mad. Opening their wings, they draw together their feet, like men doing the _danse du sac_. Then they advance toward each other, do a waltz turn, pass to a second partner, and so on. This contre-danse of prairie chickens is very amusing. They become so absorbed in it that one can approach quite near." Birds of Australia and New Guinea[1] make love with a charming ceremony. To attract his mistress the male makes a veritable country-house, or, if he is less skilful, a rustic bower of greenery. He plants rushes, green sprigs, for he is small, about the size of a blackbird; he bends them into a vault, often a metre long. He strews the floor with leaves, flowers, red fruits, white bits of bone, bright pebbles, bits of metal, jewels stolen in the neighbourhood. They say that when Australians miss a ring or a pair of scissors, they search these green tents. Our magpie shows a certain taste for bright objects: people tell tales about him. The "gardener-bird" of New Guinea is still more ingenious, to such a degree that his work is mistaken for human work and people are deceived thereby. With his beak and claws he manages as well and better than peasants, often showing a decorative taste which they lack. People search for the "origin of art": there you have it, in the sexual game of a bird. Our æsthetic manifestations are but a development of this same instinct to please which, in one specie over-excites the male, in another moves the female. If there is a surplus it will be spent aimlessly, for pure pleasure: that is human art; its origin is that of the art of birds and insects.