By the Australian instances, however, the general predilection for brilliant objects is brought into connection with the pairing dresses of pheasants, peacocks, and humming birds. The small and brilliant objects with which the bower birds play during their pairing season remind us irresistibly of the “balls on sockets” and of the ocelli designs of the colibri.[282] It is true that the pheasants carry on their tail what the Australian birds keep in their bill. But apart from this unimportant difference, the display seems to be the same in both cases. In Mr. Strange’s letter it is said that the cock, when performing the exalted antics that precede pairing, “runs to the bower, picks up a gaudy feather or a spotted leaf, pours forth some peculiar notes, and runs through the pavilion.” It is not quite clear from this wording whether the objects really are exhibited _before_ the hen. But one may safely assume that she in any case has paid some attention to her consort’s performance. She has decidedly not, any more than the pea-hen, received any sort of æsthetic impression from the display. But the brilliancy has undoubtedly stimulated her, as it stimulates all the other birds quoted in this connection, in a purely physiological way. This action, on the other hand, is sufficiently explained by recent researches on the physiological effects which the contemplation of concentrated lustre produces on animal organisms. It is also well known that objects with exactly the same qualities as the ocelli on the peacock’s tail play an important part in hypnotic experiments. And the primitive shamans as well as the modern cultivators of “crystal-gazing” are acquainted with the peculiar effects of prolonged gazing on glass-balls or the shining surface of water. More familiar still is the fascinating influence exercised by that lustrous little globe, the human eye. In all these various examples the smallness of the object fetters the attention, and thereby makes the mind a defenceless prey to the images, feelings, and impulses which for the moment invade it. The lustre, on the other hand, will, to use the language of M. Binet, strengthen the intensity of these mental images.[283] There is no reason why these effects, which presuppose no sort of intellectual activity, should not take place in animals as well as in man. In the case of the peacock, therefore, the idea “male” will imprint itself with greater and more efficacy upon the mind of the hen when she is exposed on every side to the twinkling eyes on the expanded tail of her mate.