Chap. XV. 
COLOUE AXD NIDIFICATIOX. 
171 
that looking to the birds of the world, a large majority 
of the species in which the females are conspicuously 
coloured (and in this case the males with rare exceptions 
are equally conspicuous), build concealed nests for the 
sake of protection. Mr. Wallace enumerates a long 
series of groups in which this rule holds good ; but it 
will suffice here to give, as instances, the more familiar 
groups of kingfishers, toucans, trogons, pufi-birds (Capi- 
tonidae), plaintain-eaters (Musophagae), woodpeckers, and 
parrots. Mr. Wallace believes that in these groups, 
as the males gradually acquired through sexual selec- 
tion their brilliant colours, these w^ere transferred to 
the females and were not eliminated by natural selec- 
tion, owing to the protection which they already enjoyed 
from their manner of nidification. According to this 
view^, their present manner of nesting was acquired 
before their present colours. But it seems to me 
much more probable that in most cases as the females 
were gradually rendered more and more brilliant from 
partaking of the colours of the male, they were gradu- 
ally led to change their instincts (supposing that they 
originally built open nests), and to seek protection by 
building domed or concealed nests. No one who studies, 
for instance, Audubon’s account of the differences in the 
nests of the same species in the Northern and Southern 
United States, will feel any great difficulty in admit- 
ting that birds, either by a change (in the strict sense 
of the word) of their habits, or through the natural 
selection of so-called spontaneous variations of in- 
stinct, might readily be led to modify their manner of 
nesting. 
O 
‘ Journal of Travel/ edited by A. Murray, vol. i. p. 78. 
See many statements in the ‘ Ornithological Biography.’ See, also, 
some curious observations on the nests of Italian birds by Eugenio 
Bi.ttjni, in the ‘ Atti della Societa Italiana,’ vol. xi. 1869, p. 487. 
