190 SEXUAL SELECTION: BIRDS. [Part H. 



Bembled quails? Do the slight differences between the 

 females of the common, pheasant, the Japan and golden 

 pheasants, serve as a protection, or might not their plu- 

 mages have been interchanged with impunity ? From what 

 Mr. Wallace has observed of the habits of certain gallina- 

 ceous birds in the East, he thinks that such slight differ- 

 ences are beneficial. For myself, I will only say that I 

 am not convinced. 



Formerly, when I was inclined to lay much stress on 

 the principle of protection, as accounting for the less 

 bright colors of female birds, it occurred to me that pos- 

 sibly both sexes and the young might aboriginally have 

 been brightly colored in an equal degree ; but that, subse- 

 quently, the females, from the danger incurred during 

 incubation, and the young, from being inexperienced, had 

 been rendered dull as a protection. But this view is not 

 supported by any evidence, and is not probable ; for we 

 thus in imagination expose during past times the females 

 and the young to danger, from which it has subsequently 

 been necessary to shield their modified descendants. We 

 have, also, to reduce, through a gradual process of selec- 

 tion, the females and the young to almost exactly the 

 same tints and markings, and to transmit them to the cor- 

 responding sex and period of life. It is also a somewhat 

 strange fact, on the supposition that the females and the 

 young have partaken, during each stage of the process of 

 modification, of a tendency to be as brightly colored as the 

 males, that the females have never been rendered dull- 

 colored without the young participating hi the same 

 change ; for there are no instances, as far as I can discov- 

 er, of species with the females dull-colored and the young 

 bright-colored. A partial exception, however, is offered 

 by the young of certain woodpeckers, for they have " the 

 whole upper part of the head tinged with red," which 

 afterward either decreases into a mere circular red line in 



