JOURNAL OF MAINE ORNITHOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



tidae, commonly known as swans, 

 geese, brant, and rivtr and sea ducks; 

 the Rallidae, commonly known as 

 rails, coots mud hens, and gullinuies; 

 the Limicolae, commonly known as 

 shore birds, plovers, surf birds, snipe, 

 woodcock, sandpipers, ta tiers and cur- 

 lews; the Gallinae, commonly known 

 as wild turkeys, grouse, prairie chick- 

 ens, peasants, partridges and quails. 

 Nothing in this section, however, shall 

 be construed to affect in any way the 

 protection of game, birds, as pi'ovided 

 in sections 11 and 13 of the act hereby 

 amended. 



Any person who violates any of the 

 provisions of this section shall be 

 guilty of a misdemeanor, and when 

 convicted therefor, shall be fined five 

 dollars for each offence and an addi- 

 tional five dollars for each bird, living 

 or dead, or part of bird, or nest and 

 eggs, possessed in violation of this 

 section, or to imprisonment for ten 

 days, or both, at the discretion of the 

 court. 



Professor J. Y. Stanton of Bates 

 College was then introduced by the 

 chair and delivered a very interesting 

 and instructive lecture on the evolu- 

 tion of color in birds, through the law 

 of sexual selection, beautifully illus- 

 trated by specimens, published pates, 

 and geological charts. By use of a 

 pair of Scarlet Tanagers, attention 

 was called to the diversity between 

 male and female, illustrating respec- 

 tively sexual selection and natural 

 selection; natural selection operates 

 through the medium of dull or neutral 

 tints to protect the female, while en- 

 cumbered with the care of a weak 

 brood; while the aesthetic taste of the 

 female causes her to accept the most 

 bi-ightly colored mate, and thus per- 

 petuate, through the sexual selection, 

 the bright hues to her male offspring. 



In the course of the lecture Profes- 

 sor Stanton pointed out the belief that 



the Creative power must have been at 

 work more than a million of years in 

 evolving from the reptilian stock, the 

 Archeopteryx, and as great a period 

 in evolving from this stock the Creta- 

 ceous avian types; that most or all of 

 the present families, including the 

 woodpeckei's, had become established 

 in the Miocene period. 



At this point the speaker called at- 

 tention to a section of a petrified pine 

 trunk from the Miocene formation of 

 Arizona, showing two excavations, un- 

 doubtedly made by a woodpecker about 

 the size of Dryobates villosus. Upon 

 closer examination, the marks of the 

 "chiseling' were found to be distinct. 



Professor Stanton assumed that 

 these primative birds had dark reptal- 

 ian colors, which have been slowly dif- 

 ferentiated into the brilliant tints of 

 recent birds, by sexual selection. The 

 speaker exhibited a series of Red- 

 headed Woodpeckers, which have the 

 adults of both sexes alike, but the 

 young of neutral tints, pointing out 

 the theory that the neutral colored 

 young inherit their tints from some 

 ancestral stock which had the females 

 neutral, and sexual selections had 

 evolved the bright tints of the nuptial 

 and later plumages in both the male 

 and the female, as the latter's brood- 

 ing being performed in excavations, 

 the law of natiu-al selection is domin- 

 ated by that of sexual selection, 

 through the law that like begets like, 

 when other laws are not operating. 



The Phalaropes were used to illus- 

 trate a reverse case in the order of 

 sexual selection, the females being 

 bright and the males dull. In the few 

 known anomalous cases of this nature, 

 the lusty and brilliant females take 

 the initiative in the courtships, and 

 aftei- the nuptials and egg-laying have 

 been completed, leave their mates to 

 perform the duties of incubation and 

 caring for the young. 



At this point, a most interesting 



