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 tendency to more bright-hued plumage (which indeed might be fatal to their safety, by betraying them to their enemies, the falcons and eagles), but those which most fully embodied and carried furthest the ideal specific gracefulness of the wading type? ...  Forestine flower-feeders and fruit-eaters, especially in the tropics, are almost always brightly colored.  Their chromatic taste seems to get quickened in their daily search for food among the beautiful blossoms and brilliant fruits of southern woodlands.  Thus the humming-birds, the sun-birds, and the brush-tongued lories, three very dissimilar groups of birds as far as descent is concerned, all alike feed upon the honey and the insects which they extract from the large tubular bells of tropical flowers; and all alike are noticeable for their intense metallic lustre or pure tones of color.  Again, the parrots, the toucans,