3970 Birds. 



for the most part their colours are less defined for the first year, and 

 many do not attain to their full plumage till the second or third, and 

 some not till the fourth year, or even later than this ; of which the 

 golden oriole, the roller, the bee-eater, the capercaillie, the common 

 heron and the Skuas, are conspicuous examples. Mr. Yarrell, in 

 speaking of this, says, "though not believed formerly, it is now very 

 well known that many birds build nests and produce young before 

 they have attained their own adult plumage. Baron Cuvier has stated, 

 that when the adult female bird differs from the male in the colour of 

 her plumage, the young birds of both sexes, in their first feathers, re- 

 semble the female ; the young males afterwards putting forth the co- 

 lours that indicate their sex. When the adult male and female are of 

 the same colour, the young then have for a time a plumage peculiar 

 to themselves. The pheasant may be quoted in illustration of the 

 first law, and the partridge as an example of the second. To these 

 two, a third law may be added : whenever adult birds assume a plu- 

 mage during the breeding season decidedly different in colour from 

 that which they bear in the winter, the young birds of the year have a 

 plumage intermediate in the general tone of its colour compared with 

 two periodical states of the parent birds, and bearing also indications 

 of the colours to be afterwards attained at either period." But what- 

 ever may be the first plumage given to the young bird, his time of 

 moulting will come, when the old feathers are discarded and new ones 

 come up in their place : I have elsewhere described how this takes 

 place, and how the old feather does not drop out until it has led its 

 successor into the hollow it is about to vacate. This regular annual 

 moult takes place in the autumn, when the work of nidification is over, 

 and before the general migration begins : at that moult the plumage 

 assumed, though thicker and warmer, is not usually so brilliant in co- 

 lour as the one thrown off; but again in the spring, the bird assumes 

 his bright nuptial dress, not by throwing off his old feathers and as- 

 suming new ones, but by the " gradual wearing off of the lengthened 

 lighter-coloured tips of the barbs of the feathers on the body, by which 

 the brighter tints of the plumage underneath are exposed." And this 

 is the method by which, as Tennyson sings, — 



" In the spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast; 

 Jn the spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest : 

 In the spring a livelier iiis changes on the burnish'd dove." 



And now that our bird is arrayed in the full dress assigned to his 

 species, let us remark how beautifully Nature usually assimilates his 



