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colouring rapidly loses its brilliancy, and in some cases entirely

changes in character: so that descriptions prepared by a

scientific ornithologist from skins alone, may be incorrect when

compared with living specimens.


If you look at the description of the Red-headed Gouldian-

finch (Poephila mirabilis ) in the British Museum Catalogue, you

will find it described as very pale grass-green, the belt across the

breast beautiful lilac, and the lower body below golden yellow.

In the living bird the colouring is brilliant vivid green, with the

breast bluish violet or ‘ pansy blue,’ and the abdomen saffron

yellow. The change begins to take place soon after death,

proving conclusively that the feathers are fed by the juices of

the body.


In some birds the pigment of certain feathers is soluble in

water. I am told that this is the case with the Touracous, which

when bathing stain the water, and greatly reduce the brilliancy

of their colouring; but that subsequently the feathers again

assume their vivid hues. If this is true, it can only be explained

by the fact that the feathers are still acted upon by the body, and

are living.


It has been widely and unhesitatingly asserted of

many birds, that they moult twice in the year ; and of others,

that the spring moult is a partial one, consisting in a shedding of

the terminal fringes of the feathers, so as to expose the brighter

colouring overlapped by them : the late Henry Seebohm was

much devoted to the latter explanation of those changes from

winter to summer plumage which are observable in many birds.


In some cases undoubtedly the change is effected as

described: it is certainly so in the House-Sparrow, and probably

in the Brambling ; but an examination of a Redstart, which died

in the middle of the spring change, conclusively proved that the

fringes were not shed, but changed their colour ; no broken

fringes existed in this specimen, but the tips of many ot the

feathers were particoloured.


Seebohm speaks of the Wagtails as having both an

autumn and spring moult. I kept the Pied Wagtail for about

three years in a cage, and can positively assert that it only

moulted in the autumn; I purposely kept both the Grey and

Yellow Wagtails in cages, in order to watch the change to the

spring plumage, and in neither case was a feather shed ; the

colouring grew, day by day, in the feather's themselves.


Speaking of foreign birds; if all the changes which take

place, say in the common Amaduvade Waxbill (commonly called



