Chap. XVI. THE TOUNG LIKE THE ADULT MALES. 205 



*' breast. She is usually the more courageous and 

 *' pugilistic. She makes a deep hollow guttural boom, 

 " especially at night, sounding like a small gong. The 

 " male has a slenderer frame and is more docile, with 

 " no voice beyond a suppressed hiss when angry, or a 

 '* croak." He not only performs the whole duty of 

 incubation, but has to defend the young from their 

 mother; "for as soon as she catches sight of her pro- 

 " geny she becomes violently agitated, and notwith- 

 *•' standing the resistance of the father appears to use 

 " her utmost endeavours to destroy them. For months 

 " afterwards it is unsafe to put the parents together, 

 " violent quarrels being the inevitable result, in which 

 '•the female generally comes off conqueror." ^^ So 

 that with this emu we have a complete reversal not 

 only of the parental and incubating instincts, but of 

 the usual moral qualities of the two sexes; the females 

 being savage, quarrelsome and noisy, the males gentle 

 and good. The case is very different with the African 

 ostrich, for the male is somewhat larger than the fe- 

 male and has finer plumes with more strongly con- 

 trasted colours ; nevertheless he undertakes the \vhole 

 duty of incubation.^^ 



I will specify the few other cases known to me, in 

 which the female is more conspicuously coloured than 

 the male, although nothing is known about their man- 

 ner of incubation. With the carrion-hawk of the Falk- 

 land Islands {Milvago leucurus) I was much surprised 

 to find bv dissection that the individuals, which had 

 all their tints strongly pronounced, with the cere and 

 legs orange-coloured, were the adult females ; whilst 



-3 See the excellent account of the liahits of this bird under confine- 

 ment, by Mr. A. W. Bennett, in 'Land and Water.' Maj-, 18G8, p. 233. 



2-* Mr. Sclater, on the incubation of the Struthiones, ' Pros. Zoo. 

 Soc.,' June 9, 1863. 



