RELATING TO SECONDARY SEXUAL CHARACTERS. 75 



Yarrel described a female pheasant that had assumed some of the 

 characteristic colors of the male. On dissection he found that the 

 ovary was diseased as well as the oviduct. He correctly assigns the 

 change in plumage to the condition of the ovary. He states further- 

 more that most of the female pheasants that he had examined that had 

 male plumage had not assumed the complete coloration of the male. 

 In one case, however, a complete change had taken place. The change 

 in pheasants he thought was due to old age accompanied by partial 

 or complete loss of function of the ovary. For poultry he states : 



"In the imperfect female the comb increases; a short spur or spurs appear; 

 the plumage undergoes an alteration, getting what is usually called 'foul- 

 feathered;' she ceases to produce any eggs, and makes an imperfect attempt to 

 imitate the crow of the cock. Being profitless in this state, she is usually made 

 away with. The proverb says : 



A whistling woman and a crowing hen 

 Are neither good for gods nor men. 



Our neighbors and allies the French, who seem to take a wider range in their 

 prejudice against habits which they consider irregular, have the following 

 proverb, which says: 



Poule qui chante, Pretre qui danse 

 Et Femme qui parle latin, 

 N'arrivent jamais a belle fin. 



"I have seen two instances in which females of the wild duck have assumed 

 to a considerable extent the appearance of the plumage of the mallard, even to 

 the curled feathers of the tail. One of these birds, in my own collection, was 

 given me when alive by my kind friend the late John Morgan, esq. When this 

 bird was examined after death, the sexual organs were found to be diseased, as 

 in the case of the hen pheasants referred to, and figured in the 2d volume of the 

 History of our British Birds. In the published illustrations to his Fauna of 

 Scandinavia, M. Nilsson has given a colored figure of a duck in this state of 

 plumage (plate 163), which is called a barren female, and in which the curled 

 tail-feathers are made very conspicuous. 



"From the general similarity in these females to the appearance assumed 

 for a time by healthy males in July, I am disposed to refer this seasonal change 

 in males, in this and in other species of ducks, to a temporary exhausted state 

 of the male generative organs, and their consequent diminished constitutional 

 influence on the plumage. 



"A male shut up by himself from early spring to the end of July undergoes 

 no change in his plumage; but if he is allowed to associate with females till 

 their season of incubation commecnes, he then goes through the change, and 

 this appears to indicate the cause of the partial summer moulting. 



"The appearance is somewhat different, but yet very interesting in insects 

 and Crustacea. In these classes the sexual organs are double and distinct, 

 arranged one on each side of the elongated mesial line. It sometimes happens, 

 that a species in which the sexes are of a different color, or markings, or form 

 has one sexual organ of each sort, male and female, in which case each half 

 of the same insect is developed under the exclusive influence of the sexual organ 

 on its own side. Instances are preserved among our collections of butterflies, 

 mothes and beetles; and I have seen it twice in the common lobster. 



