Chap. XIIL] BIRDS. 37 



smell of musk." So powerful Is this odor during the pair- 

 ing-season, that it can be detected long before the bird 

 can be seen." On the whole, birds appear to be the most 

 aesthetic of all animals, excepting of course man, and they 

 have nearly the same taste for the beautiful as we have. 

 This is shown by our enjoyment of the singing of birds, 

 and by our women, both civilized and savage, decking 

 their heads with borrowed plumes, and using gems which 

 are hardly more brilliantly colored than the naked skin 

 and wattles of certain birds. 



Before treating of the characters with which we are 

 here more particulafly concerned, I may just allude to 

 certain diiFei*ences between the sexes which apparently 

 depend on differences in their habits of life ; for such 

 cases, though conamon in the lower, are rare in the higher 

 classes. Two humming-birds belonging to the genus 

 Eustephanus, which inhabit the island of Juan Fernandez, 

 were long thought to be specifically distinct, but are now 

 known, as Mr. Gould informs me, to be the sexes of the 

 same species, and they differ slightly in the form of the 

 beak. In another genus of humming-birds [Grt/piis), the 

 beak of the male is serrated along the margin and hooked 

 at the extremity, thus differing much from that of the 

 female. In the curious Neomorpha of New Zealand, 

 there is a still wider difference in the form of the beak ; 

 and Mr. Gould has been informed that the male with his 

 " straight and stout beak " tears off the bark of trees, in 

 order that the female may feed on the uncovered larvfe 

 with her weaker and more curved beak. Something of 

 the same kind may be observed with our goldfinch ( Car- 

 duelis elegmis), for I am assured by Mr. J. Jenner Weir 

 that the bird-catchers can distinguish the males by their 

 slightly longer beaks. The flocks of males, as an old and 

 trustworthy bird-catcher asserted, are commonly found 



2 Gould, ' Hand-book to the Birds of Australia,' 18C5, vol. ii. p. 383. 



