106 CHILDHOOD OF ANIMALS 



partly broken up into rows of large spots. In the cassowary, the 

 dark stripes are wider than the interspaces, so that the nestling looks 

 like a dark bird banded with white. Grebes nest in the same marshy 

 streams as many of the rails and moorhens, but the down of the 

 nestlings is vividly striped, with dark bands running along the body. 

 The nestlings are carried by the mother on her back, but so also are 

 the self-coloured nestlings of swans. 



A special but very simple pattern is found in many of the geese, 

 like, for instance, the cereopsis goose, the sheldrakes (Fig. 25, middle 

 figure) and the whole tribe of ducks except the domesticated breeds. 

 The ground colour is a dirty white and this is retained on the under 

 surface. The upper surface of the head is dark brown approaching 

 black, and this is carried towards the tail as a broad stripe which 

 expands to a diamond shape over the shoulders, with extensions 

 running along the wings, and broadens out again towards the tail. 

 Another dark band, which generally meets the median band, runs 

 downwards and backwards along the outer surface of the thigh. In 

 the sheldrakes this pattern is very plain and leaves elongated spots 

 of the white ground colour just behind the wings and the insertion 

 of the legs. In the different ducks, the dark patches and stripes 

 occupy more and more of the back until they may leave the ground 

 colour showing only as a pair of bright spots opposite the insertion 

 of the legs, and a less conspicuous pair of spots opposite the wings 

 (Fig. 25, left-hand figure). Clearly, the geese and ducks show the 

 gradual disappearance of the ancestral striped pattern and its 

 replacement by a nearly self-coloured dark back. 



The downy coats of newly hatched jungle-fowl, pheasants, quail 

 and partridges and the other fowl-like game birds show a simple 

 growth pattern rather like that of the ducks and geese, and, like 

 it, tending to be smoothed over and replaced by a nearly uniform 

 tone. The ground colour varies from white to a dirty yellow and 

 remains unaltered over the lower surface (see Plate IV, p. 69). On the 

 head and back there is a dark stripe, expanding to a diamond shape 

 between the shoulders, and running backwards towards the tail 

 where it may expand again. On the hinder part of the body there 

 is a dark stripe running backwards at each side, separated from the 

 middle stripe by an unaltered portion of the light ground colour. 

 A similar dark band runs across each wing and down the thigh. Such 

 a pattern appears and reappears all through the group, however the 

 adults may differ, but it fades out, becoming fainter in the small 

 quails and partridges. 



