BIRDS— YOUNG LIKE ADULT MALES. 473 



"suit, in which the female generally comes off conqueror.'"'' So 

 that with this emu we have a complete reversal not only of the 

 parental and incubating instincts, but of the usual moral quali- 

 ties of the two sexes; the female being savage, quarrelsome, and 

 noisy, the males gentle and'good. The case is very different with 

 the African ostrich, for the male is somewhat larger than the 

 female and has finer plumes with more strongly contrasted colors; 

 nevertheless he undertakes the whole duty of incubation.^* 



I will specify the few other cases known to me, in which the 

 female is more conspicuously colored than the male, although 

 nothing is known about the manner of incubation. With the 

 carrion-hawk of the Falkland Islands (Milvago leucurus) I was 

 much surprised to find by dissection that the individuals, which 

 had all their tints strongly pronounced, with the cere and legs 

 orange-colored, were the adult females; whilst those with duller 

 plumage and gray legs were the males or the young. In an Aus- 

 tralian tree-creeper (Climacteris erythrops) the female differs 

 from the male in "being adorned with beautiful, radiated, rufous 

 "markings on the throat, the male having this part quite plain.'" 

 Lastly, in an Australian night-jar, "the female always exceeds the 

 "male in size and in the brilliance of her tints; the males, on 

 "the other hand, have two white spots on the primaries more 

 "conspicuous than in the female.'" 



We thus see that the cases in which female birds are more 

 conspicuously colored than the males, with the young in their 



=' See the excellent account of the habits of this bird under confine- 

 ment, by Mr. A. W. Bennett, in 'Land and Water,' May, 1868, p. 233. 



'^^ Mr. Sclater, on the incubation of the Struthiones, 'Proc. Zool. Soc.,' 

 June 9, 1863. So it is with the Rhea darwinii: Captain Musters says 

 ('At home with the Patagonians,' 1871, p. 128), that the male is larger, 

 stronger and swifter than the female, and of slightly dfT-ker colors: 

 yet he lakes sole chai-ge of the eggs and of the young, just as does 

 the male of the common species of Rhea. 



== For the Milvago, see 'Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle,' Birds, 

 1841, p. 16. For the Climacteris and night-Jar (Eurostopodus), see 

 Gould's 'Handbook to the Birds of Australia,' vol. i. pp. 602 and 97. 

 The New Zealand shieldrake (Tadorna variegata) offers a quite anom- 

 alous case; the head of the female is pure white, and her back is 

 redder than that of the male; the head of the male is of a rich dark 

 bronzed color, and his back is clothed with finely penciled slate-colored 

 feathers, so that altogether he may be considered as the more beau- 

 tiful of the two. He is larger and more pugnacious than the female, 

 and does not sit on the eggs. So that in all these respects this species 

 comes under our first class of cases; but Mr. Sclater ('Proc. Zool. Soc' 

 1866, p. 150) was much surprised to observe that the young of both 

 sexes, when about three months old, resembled in their dark heads and 

 necks the adult males, instead of the adult females; so that it woiUd 

 appear in this case that the females have been modified, whilst the 

 males and the young have retained a former state of plumage. 



