€iiAP. XVI. THE YOUNG LIKE THE ADULT FEMALES. 199 
that subsequently, the females from the danger in- 
curred during incubation, and the young from being 
inexperienced, had been rendered dull as a protection. 
Eut this view is not supported by any evidence, and is 
not probable ; for we thus in imagination expose during 
past times the females and the young to danger, from 
which it has subsequently been necessary to shield their 
modified descendants. We have, also, to reduce, through 
a gradual process of selection, the females and the young 
to almost exactly the same tints and markings, and to 
transmit them to the corresponding sex and period of 
life. It is also a somewhat strange fact, on the suppo- 
sition that the females and the young have partaken 
during each stage of the process of modification of a 
tendency to be as brightly coloured as the males, that the 
females have never been rendered dull-coloured without 
the young participating in the same change ; for there 
are no instances, as far as I can discover, of species with the 
females dull-coloured and the young bright-coloured. A 
partial exception, however, is offered by the young of cer- 
tain woodpeckers, for they have the whole upper part 
of the head tinged with red,” which afterwards either 
decreases into a mere circular red line in the adults of 
both sexes, or quite disappears in the adult females.^^ 
Finally, with respect to our present class of cases, 
the most probable view appears to be that successive 
variations in brightness or in other ornamental charac- 
ters, occurring in the males at a rather late period of 
life have alone been preserved ; and that most or all 
of these variations owing to the late period of life at 
which they appeared, have been from the first trans- 
mitted only to the adult male offspring. Any varia- 
Audubon, ^ Ornith. Biography,’ vol. i. p. 193. Macgillivray, ‘ Hist. 
Brit. Birds,’ vol. iii. p. 85. See also the case before given oi Indopicus 
earlotta. 
