120 SCIENTIFIC ILLUSTRATIONS [Fern 



the weak things of the world often confound the mighty, and 

 the base things are those chosen to fill up social chasms and 

 effect stupendous changes ? That which the hurricane is power- 

 less to accomplish is quietly done by the foraminiferce. The 

 change which revolutions are impotent to achieve is realised 

 merely by accumulated words of wisdom and deeds of bene- 

 volence. T. 



Feminine Masculinity. 



It is a singular fact that the males in certain sub-breeds of 

 fowls have lost some of their secondary masculine characters, 

 and from their close resemblance in plumage to the females are 

 often called "hennies." Mr. Grantley F. Berkeley relates the 

 still more singular case of a celebrated strain of " pole-cat game- 

 fowls " which produced in nearly every brood a single hen-cock. 

 The great peculiarity in one of these birds was that he, as the 

 seasons succeeded each other, was not always a hen-cock, and 

 not always of the colour called the pole-cat, which is black. 

 From the pole-cat and hen-cock feather in one season he moulted 

 to a full male-plumaged black-breasted red, and in the following 

 year he returned to the former feather. But this is not the 

 only specimen of feminine-masculinity exhibited by creatures 

 under domestication. There is the modern married man, whose 

 ancestors have been under severe conjugal training the half- 

 man. This curiosity of dejection always reminds one of the 

 " hennies." For a season he has the appearance of being a 

 manikin, but for quite an equal period he resembles the shrew. 

 Unfortunately there is, in his case, no fixed time for his alter- 

 nations of character, so you can never be sure as to how you 

 may find him. He may show signs of the masculine character 

 at the very moment when you expect to behold him in his 

 most interesting effeminacy ; and, on the other hand, you may 

 find him with all the vices of the female at the very moment 

 when you had anticipated that he would exhibit himself as a 

 man. He is most often met with in the middle-class suburbs 

 of London and large towns in the South, and is clearly an in- 

 teresting addition to the list of organisms which have very much 

 varied under domestication. VA. 



