rey, all these things make the waders, almost in spite of themselves,
handsome and shapely birds. Their feet, it is true, are generally rather
large and sprawling, with long, wide-spread toes, so as to distribute
their weight on the snow-shoe principle, and prevent them from sinking
in the deep soft mud on which they tread; but then we seldom see the
feet, because the birds, when we catch a close view of them at all, are
almost always either on stilts in the water, or flying with their legs
tucked behind them, after their pretty rudder-like fashion. I have often
wondered whether it is this general beauty of form in the waders which
has turned their aesthetic tastes, apparently, into such a sculpturesque
line. Certainly, it is very noteworthy that whenever among this
particular order of birds we get clear evidence of ornamental devices,
such as Mr. Darwin sets down to long-exerted selective preferences in
the choice of mates, the ornaments are almost always those of form
rather than those of color.

The waders, I sometimes fancy, only care for beauty of shape, not for
beauty of tint. As I stood looking at the heron here just now, the same
old idea seemed to force itself more clearly than ever upon my mind. The
decorative adjuncts--the curving tufted crest on the head, the pendent
silvery gorget on the neck, the long ornamental quills of the
pinions--all look exactly as if they were deliberately intended to
emphasize and heighten the natural gracefulness of the heron's form. May
it not be, I ask myself, that these birds, seeing one another's
statuesque shape from generation to generation, have that shape
hereditarily implanted upon the nervous system of the species, in
connection with all their ideas of mating and of love, just as the human
form is hereditarily associated with all our deepest emotions, so that
Miranda falling in love at first sight with Ferdinand is not a mere
poetical fiction, but the true illustration of a psychological fact? And
as on each of our minds and brains the picture of the beautiful human
figure is, as it were, antecedently engraved, may not the ancestral type
be similarly engraved on the minds and brains of the wading birds? If
so, would it not be natural to conclude that these birds, having thus a
very graceful form as their generic standard of taste, a graceful form
with little richness of coloring, would naturally choose as the
loveliest among their mates, not those which showed any tendenc