Chap. XY. 
COLOUE AND NIDIFICATION. 
169 
objection to his view that many birds having both sexes 
obscurely coloured build concealed nests.^^ The female 
Horn-bills (Buceros), for instance, of India and Africa 
are protected, during nidification, with extraordinary 
care, for the male plaisters up the hole in which the 
female sits on her eggs, and leaves only a small orifice 
through which he feeds her; she is thus kept a close 
prisoner during the whole period of incubation ; yet 
female hornbills are not more conspicuously coloured 
than many other birds of equal size which build open 
nests. It is a more serious objection to Mr. Wallace’s 
view, as is admitted by him, that in some few groups the 
males are brilliantly coloured and the females obscure, 
and yet the latter hatch their eggs in domed nests. 
This is the case with the Grallinm of Australia, the 
Superb Warblers (Maluridse) of the same country, 
the Sun-birds (Nectarinise), and with several of the 
Australian Honey-suckers or Meliphagidse.^® 
If we look to the birds of England we shall see that 
there is no close and general relation between the 
colours of the female and the nature of the nest con- 
structed by her. About forty of our British birds (ex- 
cluding those of large size which could defend them- 
selves) build in holes in banks, rocks, or trees, or con- 
struct domed nests. If we take the colours of the 
female goldfinch, bullfinch, or blackbird, as a standard 
of the degree of conspicuousness, which is not highly 
dangerous to the sitting female, then out of the above 
forty birds, the females of only twelve can be considered 
I may specify, as instances of obscurely-coloured birds building 
concealed nests, the species belonging to eight Australian genera, 
described in Gould’s ‘ Handbook of the Birds of Australia,’ vol. i. 
p. 340, 362, 365, 383, 387, 389, 391, 414. 
Jerdon, ‘ Birds of India,’ vol. i. p. 244. 
On the nidification and colours of these latter species, see Gould’s 
‘ Handbook,’ &c., vol. i. p. 504, 527. 
