INFANTILE UGLINESS 135 



habits they are a strange blend of Rail and Cor- 

 morant, and all we know about their young is that 

 Prince Maximilian of Wied once shot a male of the 

 South American species (Heliornis fulica) carrying 

 two naked young under its wings. A male Dabchick 

 might have been doing this, but the queer thing 

 about the Finfoot's young is that they should have 

 been naked, since such young always remain in the 

 nest ; further information is certainly much to be 

 desired, but the Asiatic bird seems everywhere 

 rare, and nobody has taken much trouble about the 

 African and American species, though both have 

 been kept in captivity, one of the former having even 

 been brought to England by Mr. J. D. Hamlyn. 



Besides the inactivity of passive nestlings, the 

 absence or very slight development of down in 

 many of them is very striking, and their extremely 

 repulsive appearance when thus clad, or rather 

 unclad, makes it easier to understand the descent 

 of birds from such an unpopular class as reptiles. 

 " The young at first are perfectly bare and very 

 hateful," is the remark of Russ on the young of a 

 little Finch, as quaintly translated by Dr. Butler 

 in his book on foreign cage-birds. 



But there are gradations of this in the same 

 family ; for instance, among the Passerines, the 

 young Lyre-bird is well clothed with down, and 

 Mr. W. Frost tells me that he finds the young of 

 the pretty Thrush-like Pittas, at any rate the Aru 

 Islands species, are so as well ; Canaries and Robins 

 have a little down, but Sparrows and Crows none. 



