292 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
intimate study. We owe it to those who are to follow us that 
we should put on record any points in which it may be under- 
going change. Colour is not, I think, one of these, and I have 
added the latter part of the present paper in the hope that 
it may prevent other students attaching too much importance to 
the extremely thin layer of ceratin on which the tints of the bird 
depend. To urge the chromatic stability of such species as 
S. indicus as an objection seems illogical, for the birds are living 
under far different conditions. To me it seems that the colours 
of the genus are instable, but the points of psychology appear 
to be less subject to change and more eloquent of past history, 
and in this light it becomes more important to know whether a 
bird does or does not perch on sheep than to learn the colour 
(and in this the structure) of its plumage. Indeed, the mind 
and habits of the Starling might well be investigated along 
several other avenues—its mimetic song, polyandry, the theories 
of the ‘‘ psychology of crowds” as applied to aerial evolutions. 
All these have some bearing on its increase, and so, through 
agriculture, on the larger problems of human life. 
