bees PROTECTIVE RESEMBLANCES AMONG ANIMALS 81 
are distinguished by unusual brilliancy of plumage, the 
females are much more obscure, and often remarkably plain- 
coloured. The exceptions are such as eminently to prove the 
rule, for in most cases we can see a very good reason for 
them. In particular, there are a few instances among wading 
and gallinaceous birds in which the female has decidedly 
more brilliant colours than the male; but it is a most curious 
and interesting fact that in most if not all these cases the 
males sit upon the eggs; so that this exception to the usual 
rule almost demonstrates that it is because the process of 
incubation is at once very important and very dangerous, 
that the protection of obscure colouring is developed. The 
most striking example is that of the gray phalarope (Phala- 
ropus fulicarius). When in winter plumage, the sexes of this 
bird are alike in coloration, but in summer the female is 
much the most conspicuous, having a black head, dark wings, 
and reddish-brown back, while the male is nearly uniform 
brown, with dusky spots. Mr. Gould in his Birds of Great 
Britain figures the two sexes in both winter and summer 
plumage, and remarks on the strange peculiarity of the usual 
colours of the two sexes being reversed, and also on the still 
more curious fact that the “male alone sits on the eggs,” 
which are deposited on the bare ground. In another British 
bird, the dotterell, the female is also larger and more brightly 
coloured than the male; and it seems to be proved that the 
males assist in incubation even if they do not perform it 
entirely, for Mr. Gould tells us “that they have been shot 
with the breast bare of feathers, caused by sitting on the 
eggs.” The small quail-like birds forming the genus Turnix 
have also generally large and bright-coloured females, and we 
are told by Mr. Jerdon in his Birds of India that “the natives 
report that during the breeding season the females desert 
their eggs and associate in flocks while the males are employed 
in hatching the eggs.” It is also an ascertained fact that the 
females are more bold and pugnacious than the males. <A 
further confirmation of this view is to be found in the fact 
(not hitherto noticed) that in a large majority of the cases in 
which bright colours exist in both sexes incubation takes 
place in a dark hole or in a dome-shaped nest. Female 
kingfishers are often equally brilliant with the male, and they 
G 
