^S4 The Descent of Man. Part II. 



In regard to birds which build in holes or construct domed 

 acsts, other advantages, as Mr. Wallace remarks, besides con- 

 cealment are gained, such as shelter from the rain, greater 

 warmth, and in hot countries protection from the sun;" so that 

 it is no falid objection to his view that many birds having both 

 sexes obscarely coloured build concealed nests.'^ The female 

 Horn-bill {Jiuneroa), for instance, of India and Africa is protected 

 during incubation with extraordinary care, for she plasters up 

 with her own excrement the orifice of the hole in which she sits 

 on her eggs, leaving only a small orifice through which the male 

 feeds her ; she is thus kept a close prisoner during the whole 

 period of incubation ; ^^ yet female horn-bills are not more con- 

 spicuously coloured than many other birds of equal size whicli 

 build open nests. It is a more serious objection to Mr. Wallace's 

 view, as is admitted by him, that in some few groups the males 

 are brilliantly coloured and the females obscure, and yet the 

 latter hatch their eggs in domed nests. This is the case with the 

 Grallinse of Australia, the Superb Warblers (Maluridse) of the 

 same country, the Sun-birds (NectariniEe), and with several of 

 the Australian Honey-suckers or Meliphagidse." 



If we look to the birds of England we shall see that there is no 

 close and general relation between the colours of the female and 

 the nature of the nest which is constructed. About forty of our 

 British birds (excluding those of large size which could defend 

 themselves) build in holes in banks, rocks, or trees, or construct 

 domed nests. If we take the colours of the female goldfinch, 

 bullfinch, or blackbird, as a standard of the degree of con- 

 spicuousness, which is not highly dangerous to the sitting 

 female, then out of the above forty birds, the females of only 

 twelve can bo considered as conspicuous to a dangerous degree, 



tom.&na mact'oura has the head and very hot weather, when the sun 

 tail dark blue with reddish loins; was shining brightly, as if their 

 the female Lampomis porphymrus eggs would be thus injured, than 

 is blackish-green on the upper duringcool,cloudy, or rainy weather, 

 surface, with the lores and sides of '^ I may specify, as instances of 

 the throat crimson; the female dull-coloured birds building con- 

 Jiuiampis jugularis has the top of cealed nests, the species belonging 

 the head and back green, but the to eight Australian genera, de- 

 loins and the tail are crimson, scribed in Gould's ' Handbook of the 

 Wiiny other instances of highly Birds of Australia,' vol. i. pp. 340, 

 conspicuous frmales could be given. 362, 365, 383, 387, 389, 391, 414. 

 See Mr. Gould's magnihcent work '° Mr. C. Home, 'froc. Zoolog. 

 Dn this family. Soc' 1869, p. 243. 



" Mr. Salvin noticed in Guate- " On the nidification and colours 



mala ('Ibis,' 1854, p. 375) that of these latter species, see Goul.i'i 



humming-birds were m'Tch more ' Handbook,' &c., vol. i. pp. 504, 527 

 anwilliig to 'ea'"< their ne.ts durins 



