132 THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 
black, excepting that upon the angle of the wing, 
spoken of roughly as his shoulder, though in reality 
it is equivalent to our wrist, there appears a splendid 
orange patch with a border of lemon yellow. When 
he folds his wing he pushes this colored angle of the 
wing so deftly under the feathers of his shoulder as 
almost to conceal it. When in flight the bird is ex- 
ceedingly conspicuous, showing, with every bend and 
twist of his body, his gorgeous epaulets. Meanwhile, 
the female is likely to pass unnoticed. She is dull in 
color and streaked like the grass among which she 
lives. During the mating season the male hovers 
about her, swaying from side to side in such a way as 
certainly to make it appear as if he realized his good 
points and was bringing them to bear as effectively 
as he knew how. After his mate has nested and is 
rearing her young, it would appear that the male uses 
his brilliancy to lure the observing enemy away from 
the nest containing his wife and children. 
Another illustration of the remarkable superiority 
of the male over the female, in many parts of the 
bird world, is seen in the case of the common barn- 
yard fowl. The rooster is so much more gorgeous 
than the hen that anyone reasonably acquainted with 
these birds cannot have failed to notice the fact. In 
some of our modern varieties we have by breeding 
colored them nearly alike. The original chicken is 
