Feathers O1 
For, higher up on the wings, and on the shoulders, we 
find that the fine specks which were barely noticeable on 
the tips of some of the wing-feathers, are in the ascend- 
ant, and absorb or replace the white spots over the whole 
feather. The faint trace of the third line near the shaft 
of which I spoke, has suddenly assumed an unexpected 
importance and has spread out into a broad central band. 
The young or the female might give us a clew; for in 
many birds the coloration of these shows a more ancient 
arrangement of colour pattern than the feathers of the 
male. 
The Indian Wood Ibis 
our eyes when we observe it in a zoological garden; what 
a fishy smell it generally diffuses, how unpleasant are its 
feeding habits, and what a dull black and white colora- 
tion it has! Surely here is a bird with nothing which 
could possibly appeal to our esthetic sense. But we are 
mistaken. Some of the innermost feathers of its wings, 
what an imbecile it looks to 
seldom visible, except when the bird partly spreads them, 
are of the most beautiful rose hue, shading at the tip 
into a deeper pink. Seldom, even in Nature, will we 
find tints comparable to the delicacy and bloom of these 
hidden feathers. 
We have gone into these details only to show the 
possibilities of a little feather-study. Even our common 
Plymouth Rock chickens and hundreds of other birds 
will show us unthought-of beauties, and in the fields or 
in a zoological park we have only to use our eyes more 
carefully to realize how *auch we usually pass by un- 
noticed. 
