38 NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OP DUBLIN. 



shoulders, so as to draw blood ; well-trained ganders have been known 

 to sell for as much as £20 ; and betting on them runs high. 



The habit of covering up the eggs when the goose leaves the nest is 

 observed in several of the ducks and geese of the Southern Hemisphere. 

 The upland goose, which inhabits the Falkland Islands and adjacent 

 parts of the South American continent, has this habit. "When the 

 female leaves the nest after laying, she covers it up with straw ; but if 

 the eggs are set, she covers it up with down; it is supposed her object 

 in the former case is to prevent their destruction by birds of prey, and 

 in the latter to keep warmth in the eggs. This goose has got its name 

 from keeping to the interior of the islands, being seldom or never 

 found near the coasts ; it has the same dislike to water and love of grass 

 which the Cereopsis has. 



The plumage of the Cereopsis geese is precisely alike in both sexes. 

 It is strange that there is, as a general rule, so little sexual difference 

 of plumage in geese when there is so much in many of the ducks; the 

 male and female of the upland geese afford a striking contrast to each 

 other, although the ashy- headed are exactly alike. Good examples of 

 birds, in which the sexes are exactly alike, as far as plumage is con- 

 cerned, are snipes, swallows, doves, crows, kingfishers, parrots, and 

 the majority of the waders. Sex may sometimes be determined by 

 sound when not by plumage. Mr. R. P. "Williams, who has had much 

 experience of Cereopsis geese, thinks the noise the female makes, a 

 kind of hoarse grunting bark, quite characteristic of the sex. The 

 male of the "Warbling Grass Paroquet or love bird (Melopsittaeus undu- 

 latus), known also by many other names, such as the Canary or Zebra 

 Parrot, the Scalloped Parrot, Budgeree-gar of the colonists (budgeree, 

 handsome), has a pleasant inward warbling song, with which, on a fine 

 sunny day, he serenades the female, who apparently listens with great 

 delight and attention, but is mute as far as any agreeable sound is con- 

 cerned. In the Emeus, in whom the sex cannot be distinguished by 

 the plumage, the female utters a booming noise like a tap upon a large 

 drum. Among song birds the distinction of sex by voice, when the 

 plumage is alike, is very marked. It is unnecessary to allude, as a 

 sexual characteristic, to the difference of pitch in the human voice, 

 amounting to a whole octave. It has been asserted by some, and the 

 opinion is generally entertained by dealers, that the male bird, in the 

 case of parrots and cockatoos, speaks better than the female ; but there are 

 some instances of both the rose-crested, white-crested, and lesser sulphur- 

 crested cockatoos being good talkers, and laying eggs in confinement. 

 When plumage and voice fail as sexual diagnostics, size may be taken 

 into consideration ; but the male is not always larger than the female. 

 In the case of the hawk, the falcon or female is one-third as large as 

 the tercel or male bird. The female eagle is larger than the male, and 

 in almost all the species of owls, the female exceeds the male in size, 

 the difference being very remarkable in the Snowy Owl (Surma nyctea). 

 Another bird of the Southern Hemisphere, which not unfrequently 

 breeds in the gardens, is the Emeu. One of the hen Emeus laid six 



