166; SEXUAL SELECTION: BIEDS. Paet IL 
We are led to a nearly similar conclusion with 
respect to the length of the tail in the various species 
of pheasants. In the Eared pheasant {Crossoptilon 
auritum) the tail is of equal length in both sexes^ 
namely, sixteen or seventeen inches; in the common 
pheasant it is about twenty inches long in the male^ 
and twelve in the female ; in Soemmerring's pheasant, 
thirty-seven inches in the male, and only eight in the 
female ; and lastly in Eeeve’s pheasant it is sometimes 
actually seventy-two inches long in the male and six- 
teen in the female. Thus in the several species, the 
tail of the female differs much in length, irrespectively 
of that of the male ; and this can be accounted for 
as it seems to me, with much more probability, by the 
laws of inheritance, — that is by the successive varia- 
tions having been from the first more or less closely 
limited in their transmission to the male sex, — than by 
the agency of natural selection, owing to the length of 
tail having been injurious in a greater or less degree 
to the females of the several species. 
We may now cousider Mr. Wallace’s arguments in 
regard to the sexual coloration of birds. He believes 
that the bright tints originally acquired through sexual 
selection by the males, would in all or almost all cases 
have been transmitted to the females, unless the trans- 
ference had been checked through natural selection. 
I may here remind the reader that various facts 
bearing on this view have already been given under 
reptiles, amphibians, fishes, and lepidoptera. Mi\ 
Wallace rests his belief chiefly, but not exclusively, as 
we shall see in the next chapter, on the following state- 
ment,^ that when both sexes are coloured in a strikingly- 
Journal of Travel/ edited by A. Murray,, vol. i. 1868, p. 78. 
