100 THE COURTSHIP OF ANIMALS 



significant because they are commonly polygamous — afforci 

 a quite remarkable series of displays, only some of which 

 can be suminarized in these pages. In every case, too, 

 they are accompanied by conspicuous coloration and a 

 more or less excessive development of brightly-coloured 

 plumes, or areas of bare skin. In some, as in those 

 wonderful birds the Tragopans, the development of bare 

 skin, vividly coloured, and produced into pendulous folds, 

 has attained a degree met with nowhere else among this 

 group. These flaps, or finger-like wattles, as the case may 

 be, under the influence of sexual excitement become 

 turgid, and their hues enormously intensified : though 

 beyond this fact but little else is known of their per- 

 formances. In Swinhoe's Pheasant the face is bare, the 

 skin being covered, as in the case of the common Pheasant, 

 with tiny villi of a vivid red colour. But when excited 

 by the presence of a female the upper part of this face 

 area rises high above the head like a pair of horns. With 

 these turgid, and erect, the bird makes a series of 

 short, semicircular rushes around his prospective mate, 

 accompanying each of these gyrations with an angry 

 hissing sound. The Golden, and Amherst Pheasants 

 are among the most gorgeously clad of birds. Not their 

 least conspicuous ornament is a cape-like frill of long, 

 highly coloured feathers of which the birds seem to be 

 extremely conscious ; for when endeavouring to excite 

 the female nearest him to the necessary pitch of sexual 

 desire, he places himself sideways before her, drawing 

 the frill round to the side facing her, and dropping the 

 wing, in order, as it would seem, that she may miss 

 nothing of his resplendent livery. This side of his nature 

 he reserves for her. Intruding rivals are treated after 

 quite another fashion, for like most of the gallinaceous 



