16(j SEXUAL selection: BIEDS. PartIL 



We are led to a nearly similar conclusion with 

 respect to the length of tlie tail in the various species 

 of pheasants. In the Eared pheasant (Crossoj)tilon 

 auritum) the tail is of equal length in both sexes, 

 namely, sixteen or seventeen inches; in the common 

 pheasant it is about twenty inches long in the male, 

 and twelve in the female; in Scemmerring's pheasant, 

 thirty-seven inches in the male, and only eight in the 

 female ; and lastly in Reeve's pheasant it is sometimes 

 actually seventy-two inches long in the male and six- 

 teen in the female. Thus in the several species, the 

 tail of the female differs much in length, irrespectively 

 of that of the male ; and this can be accounted for 

 as it seems to me, with much more probability, by the 

 laws of inheritance, — that is by the successive varia- 

 tions having been from the first more or less closely 

 limited in their transmission to the male sex, — tlian by 

 the agency of natural selection, owing to the length of 

 tail having been injurious in a greater or less degree 

 to the females of the several species. 



We may now consider Mr. Wallace's arguments in 

 regard to the sexual coloration of birds. He believes 

 that tlie bright tints originally acquired through sexual 

 selection by the males, would in all or almost all cases 

 have been transmitted to the females, unless the trans* 

 ference had been checked through natural selection. 

 1 may here remind the reader that various facts 

 bearing on this view have already been given under 

 reptiles, amphibians, fishes, and lepidoptera. Mr. 

 Wallace rests his belief chiefly, but not exclusively, as 

 we shall see in the next chapter, on the following state- 

 ment,^ that when both sexes are coloured in a strikingly- 



' ' Journal of Travel/ edited by A. Murray, vol. i. 1868, p. 78. 



