A TRIPLE SUCCESSION 275 



When the male and female moorhen stand, 

 together, on the nest, it is impossible to distinguish 

 one from the other. The legs, which in the male, 

 alone, are gartered, are generally hidden, whilst the 

 splendid scarlet cere — making a little conflagration 

 amongst the rushes — and the coloration of the 

 plumage, are alike in both — at least for field 

 observation. In the early autumn, and onwards, 

 one sees numbers of moorhens that have a green 

 cere, instead of a red one, and the plumage of whose 

 back and wings is of a very plain, sober brown, 

 much lighter than we have known it hitherto. 

 These are the young birds of the preceding spring 

 and summer, and everything in regard to their 

 different coloration would be simple enough, if it 

 were not for a curious fact — or one which seems to 

 me to be curious — viz. this, that the moorhen chicks 

 have, when first hatched, and for some time after- 

 wards, a red cere, as at maturity. It seems very 

 strange that, being born with what is, probably,^ a 

 sexual adornment, they should afterwards lose it, 

 to reacquire it, again, later on. Darwin explains the 

 difference between the young and the parent form, 

 upon the principle that '' at whatever period of life 

 a peculiarity first appears, it tends to reappear in the 

 offspring, at a corresponding age, though sometimes 

 earlier." Thus, in the plumage of the young and 

 female pheasant, or the young green woodpecker, 

 we may suppose ourselves to see the ancestral 

 unadorned states of these birds. But what should 

 we think if the young male pheasant was, at first, as 

 brilliant as the mature bird, then became plain, like 

 the female, and afterwards reassumed its original 



