■\ Chap. VII. SEXUAL DIFFERENCES. 253 



though dressed in the feathers of the hen, "are high-spirited 

 birds, and their courage has been often proved : " an engraving- 

 even has been published of one celebrated hen-tailed • victor 

 Mr. Tegetmeier 48 has recorded the remarkable case of a brown- 

 breasted red Game-cock which, after assuming its perfect 

 masculine plumage, became hen-feathered in the autumn of 

 the following year; but he did not lose voice, spurs, strength 

 nor productiveness. This bird has now retained the same cha- 

 racter during five seasons, and has begot both hen-feathered 

 and male-feathered offspring. Mr. G-rantley F. Berkeley relates 

 the still more singular case of a celebrated strain of "polecat 

 Game-fowls," which produced in nearly every brood a single 

 hen-cock. « The great peculiarity in one of these birds was that 

 lie, as the seasons succeeded each other, was not always a hen- 

 cock, and not always of the colour called the polecat, which is 

 black. From the polecat and hen-cock feather in one season he 

 moulted to a full male-plumaged black-breasted red, and in the 

 following year he returned to the former feather." 49 



I have remarked in my 'Origin of Species' that secondary 

 sexual characters are apt to differ much in the species of the 

 same genus, and to be unusually variable in the individuals of 

 the same species. So it is with the breeds of the fowl, as we 

 have already seen, as far as the colour of plumage is concerned, 

 and so it is with the other secondary sexual characters. Firstly,' 

 the comb differs much in the various breeds, 50 and its form is 

 eminently characteristic of each kind, with the exception of the 

 workings, in which the form has not been as yet determined 

 on by fanciers, and fixed by selection. A single, deeply-serrated 

 eonib is the typical and most common form. It differs much 

 n fflze, being immensely developed in Spanish fowls; and in a 



«*al breed called Red-caps, it is sometimes "upwards of three 

 ic ies m breadth at the ^^ and ^^ ^ an ^ _^ k 



*ngth, measured to the end of the peak behind."- In some 

 ^eas the comb is double, and when the two ends are cemented 



m^T^^^ 00108 ' S ° C -' M f Ch ' f ° r aa aCCOmt > ** fetches, of all the 



ien-taiVcock wlS? ° ^'^^ ° f the comb known to him ' 



Libited at Z «f • 1 t0 ™ GX " and likewise with aspect to the tail, as 



49 'The T* £vT y '-, n , presently to be given. 



50 I am n!il ' P , r ^J 861 " T ^ ' ^try Book/ by Tegetmeier, 

 am much indebted to Mr. Brent 1866, p. 234. 



