104 CHILDHOOD OF ANIMALS 



grow, and it is probable that they serve as guides to the mother. A 

 light may be unnecessary to find the way to one's own mouth, but a 

 little help to the mouths of others may not be amiss. 



The colour and pattern of the first coat of downy feathers, whether 

 that appears before hatching or is acquired in a few days, never bear 

 any intelligible relation to the coloration of the adult plumage. 

 Very often indeed the colour is uniform, varying from pure white 

 through dusky yellows and greens to pure black, and he would be an 

 ingenious person who could trace any connection between the shades 

 of the downy coat and the habits and surroundings of the young. 

 The ostrich and the apteryx, the largest and the smallest of the 

 flightless birds, are uniformly coloured, the latter being of a dusky 

 grey, the former grey with faint traces of the striping and mottling 

 seen in the other ostrich-like birds, and appearing as if the marks had 

 been washed out. Young penguins all wear a thick coat of down 

 (see Plate VII) , which, although it may be a little lighter in front 

 and a little darker on the back, is evenly coloured ; in some, like the 

 common rock-hoppers most frequently seen in zoological gardens, 

 being very dark brown, almost black, in others being dark buff, light 

 yeUow or dirty white with sometimes, as in the emperor penguins, 

 black on the head. Until man came to disturb them, penguins had 

 few enemies except the weather in the great rookeries in which they 

 breed and had no need of special protection from concealing colora- 

 tion. The downy coat of the albatross is sooty -brown. Pelicans are 

 hatched naked, but in a few days their flesh-coloured skin is covered 

 with a fluffy coat, pure white in colour. Flamingoes show no trace of 

 the brilliant scarlet that decorates their adult plumage, but are snowy- 

 white when they are in down. Screamers [Chauna) when they are 

 hatched appear in a uniform coat of grey-brown, a little yellower on 

 the head, and set off by the brilliant red of the skin round the eyes 

 and the naked legs. Newly hatched swans are pure white in some 

 species, as, for example, in the case of the very beautiful black-necked 

 swan [see Plate XI, p. 240), but more usually they are yellowish. 

 Some of the geese and ducks, particularly the domesticated species, 

 are clad in a monotonous uniform of white, which may be pure white, 

 yellowish or dusky, but this is not the familiar uniform of their tribe. 

 The young of the rails, coots and moorhens are almost quite black 

 when they are clad in their first downy covering. Sometimes there 

 is a faint metallic sheen recalling, the vivid colours of the adults. The 

 chick of the Australian waterhen has its dusky head just lightened 

 with a greenish-purple iridescence ; the black of the chick of the 



