18661872] SEXUAL SELECTION 87 



Gallus bankiva frequents drier and more open situations than Letter 450 

 the pea-hen of Java, which is found among grassy and leafy 

 vegetation, corresponding with the colours of the t\vo. So 

 the Argus pheasant, male and female, are, I feel sure, protected 

 by their tints corresponding to the dead leaves of the lofty 

 forest in which they dwell, and the female of the gorgeous 

 fire-back pheasant Lophura viellottii is of a very similar rich 

 brown colour. 



I do not, however, at all think the question can be settled 

 by individual cases, but by only large masses of facts. The 

 colours of the mass of female birds seem to me strictly 

 analogous to the colours of both sexes of snipes, woodcocks, 

 plovers, etc., which are undoubtedly protective. 



Now, supposing, on your view, that the colours of a male 

 bird become more and more brilliant by sexual selection, and 

 a good deal of that colour is transmitted to the female till it 

 becomes positively injurious to her during incubation, and the 

 race is in danger of extinction ; do you not think that all the 

 females who had acquired less of the male's bright colours, 

 or who themselves varied in a protective direction, would be 

 preserved, and that thus a good protective colouring would 

 soon be acquired ? 



If you admit that this could occur, and can show no good 

 reason why it should not often occur, then we no longer differ, 

 for this is the main point of my view. 



Have you ever thought of the red wax-tips of the Bomby- 

 cilla beautifully imitating the red fructification of lichens used 

 in the nest, and therefore the females have it too ? Yet this 

 is a very sexual-looking character. 



If sexes have been differentiated entirely by sexual selec- 

 tion the females can have no relation to environment. But 

 in groups when both sexes require protection during feeding 

 or repose, as snipes, woodcock, ptarmigan, desert birds and 

 animals, green forest birds, etc., arctic birds of prey, and 

 animals, then both sexes are modified for protection. 

 Why should that power entirely cease to act when sexual 

 differentiation exists and when the female requires protection, 

 and why should the colour of so many female birds seem to 

 be protective, if it has not been made protective by selection. 



It is contrary to the principles of Origin of Species, that 

 colour should have been produced in both sexes by sexual 



