In the spring movements of the fishes up the stream, toward their spawning-beds, the females are the pioneers, appearing some days in advance of the males. With the birds the reverse is the case, the males coming a week or ten days before the females. The female fish is usually the larger and stronger, and perhaps better able to take the lead; among most reptiles the same fact holds, and throughout the insect world there is to my knowledge no exception to the rule. Among the birds, the only exception I am aware of is in the case of the birds of prey. Here the female is the larger and stronger. If you see an exceptionally large and powerful eagle, rest assured the sex is feminine. But higher in the scale the male comes to the front and leads in size and strength. But the first familiar spring birds are cocks; hence the songs and tilts and rivalries. Hence also the fact that they are slightly in excess of the other sex, to make up for this greater exposure; apparently no courting is done in the South, and no matches are prearranged. The males leave irregularly without any hint, I suspect, to the females as to when and where they will meet them. In the case of the passenger pigeon, however, the two sexes travel together, as they do among the migrating water-fowls. With the song-birds, love-making begins as soon as the hens are here. So far as I have observed, the robin and the bluebird win their mates by gentle and fond approaches; but certain of the sparrows, notably the little social sparrow or "chippie," appear to carry the case by storm. The same proceeding may be observed among the English sparrows, now fairly established on our soil. Two or three males beset a female, and a regular scuffle ensues. The poor bird is pulled and jostled and cajoled amid what appears to be the greatest mirth and hilarity of her audacious suitors. Her plumage is plucked and ruffled; the rivals roll over each other and over her; she extricates herself as best she can, and seems to say or scream "no," "no," to every one of them with great emphasis. What finally determines her choice would be hard to say. Our own sparrows are far less noisy and obstreperous, but the same little comedy in a milder form is often enacted among them. When two males have a tilt, they rise several feet in the air, beak to beak, and seek to deal each other blows as they mount. I have seen two male chewinks facing each other and wrathfully impelled upward in the same manner, while the female that was the bone of contention between them regarded them unconcernedly from the near bushes.