132 THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 



black, excepting that upon the angle of the wing, 

 spoken of roughly as his shoulder, though in reality 

 it is equivalent to our wrist, there appears a splendid 

 orange patch with a border of lemon yellow. When 

 he folds his wing he pushes this colored angle of the 

 wing so deftly under the feathers of his shoulder as 

 almost to conceal it. When in flight the bird is ex- 

 ceedingly conspicuous, showing, with every bend and 

 twist of his body, his gorgeous epaulets. Meanwhile, 

 the female is likely to pass unnoticed. She is dull in 

 color and streaked like the grass among which she 

 lives. During the mating season the male hovers 

 about her, swaying from side to side in such a way as 

 certainly to make it appear as if he realized his good 

 points and was bringing them to bear as effectively 

 as he knew how. After his mate has nested and is 

 rearing her young, it would appear that the male uses 

 his brilliancy to lure the observing enemy away from 

 the nest containing his wife and children. 



Another illustration of the remarkable superiority 

 of the male over the female, in many parts of the 

 bird world, is seen in the case of the common barn- 

 yard fowl. The rooster is so much more gorgeous 

 than the hen that anyone reasonably acquainted with 

 these birds cannot have failed to notice the fact. In 

 some of our modern varieties we have by breeding 

 colored them nearly alike. The original chicken is 



