Chap. XV.] COLOR AND NIDIFICATION. 171 



the mean while she presents an intermediate garb, which 

 is ultimately exchanged for the same livery as that of the 

 male." So, again, the female Falco peregrinus acquires 

 her blue plumage more slowly than the male. Mr, Swin- 

 hoe states that, with one of the Drongo shrikes (Dicnirtis 

 macroeercus), the male, while almost a nestling, moults his 

 soft brown plumage and becomes of a uniform glossy 

 greenish-black ; but the female retains for a long time the 

 white strise and spots on the axillary feathers, and does 

 not completely assume the uniform black color of the 

 male for the first three years. The same excellent ob- 

 server remarks that in the spring of the second year the 

 female spoonbill (Platalea) of China resembles the male 

 of the first year, and that apparently it is not until the 

 third spring that she acquires the same adult plumage as 

 that possessed by the male at a much earlier age. The 

 female JBomhycilla Carolinensis diifers very little from the 

 male, but the appendages, which like beads of red sealing- 

 wax ornament the wing-feathers, are not developed in 

 her so early in life as in the male. The upper mandible 

 in the male of an Indian parrakeet {JPalceornis Javanicus) 

 is coral-red from his earliest youth, but in the female, as 

 Mr. Blyth has observed with caged and wild birds, it is at 

 first black and does not become red until the bird is at 

 least a year old, at which age the sexes resemble each 

 other in all respects. Both sexes of the wild-turkey are 

 ultimately furnished with a tuft of bristles on the breast, 

 but in two-year-old birds the tuft is about four inches long 

 in the male and hardly apparent in the female ; when, 

 however, the latter has reached her fourth year, it is from 

 four to five inches in length.''* 



^' On Ardetta, Translation of Cuvier's ' Regne Animal,' by Mr. Blytb, 

 foot-note, p. 159. On the Peregrine Falcon, Mr. Blyth, in Charlesworth's 

 'Mag. of Nat. Hist.' vol. i. IBS'/, p. 304. On Dicrurus, 'Ibis,' 1863, p. 

 44. On the Platalea, 'Ibis,' vol. vi. 1864, p. 366. On the Bombyeilla, 



