Various mammals, carried away by the reckless fury of the sexual impulse, are apt to ill-treat their females (R. Müller, Sexualbiologie, p. 123). This treatment is, however, usually only an incident of courtship, the result of excess of ardor. "The chaffinches and saffron-finches (Fringella and Sycalis) are very rough wooers," says A. G. Butler (Zoölogist, 1902, p. 241); "they sing vociferously, and chase their hens violently, knocking them over in their flight, pursuing and savagely pecking them even on the ground; but when once the hens become submissive, the males change their tactics, and become for the time model husbands, feeding their wives from their crop, and assisting in rearing the young."
Cf. A. C. Haddon, Head Hunters, p. 107.
Marro considers that there may be transference of emotion,—the impulse of violence generated in the male by his rivals being turned against his partner,—according to a tendency noted by Sully and illustrated by Ribot in his Psychology of the Emotions, part i, chapter xii.