Chap. XVL 
NOVELTY ADMIRED. 
231 
of some parrots can hardly be said to be more beautiful, 
at least according to our taste, than the females, but 
they differ from them in such points, as the male 
haying a rose-coloured collar instead of, as in the 
female, ‘^a bright emeraldine narrow green collar;” or 
in the male having a black collar instead of a yellow 
demi-collar in front,” with a pale roseate instead of a 
plum-blue head.^^ As so many male birds have for 
their chief ornament elongated tail-feathers or elongated 
crests, the shortened tail, formerly described in the 
male of a humming-bird, and the shortened crest of 
the male goosander almost seem like one of the many 
opposite changes of fashion which we admire in our 
own dresses. 
Some members of the heron family offer a still more 
curious case of novelty in colouring having appa- 
rently been appreciated for the sake of novelty. The 
young of the Ardea asha are white, the adults being 
dark slate-coloured ; and not only the young, but the 
adults of the allied Buphus eoromandus in their winter 
plumage are white, this colour changing into a rich 
golden-buff during the breeding-season. It is incredible 
that the young of these two species, as well as of some 
other members of the same family,^^ should have been 
specially rendered pure white and thus made conspi- 
cuous to their enemies; or that the adults of one of 
these two species should have been specially rendered 
white during the winter in a country which is never 
See Jerdon on tlie genus Palseornis, ‘ Birds of India,’ vol. i. p. 
258-260. 
o8 The young of Ardea rufescens and A. ecerulea of the U. States are 
likewise white, the adults being coloured in accordance with their spe- 
cific names. Audubon (‘ Ornith. Biography,’ vol. iii. p. 416 ; vol. iv. 
p. 58) seems rather pleased at the thought that this remarkable change 
of plumage will greatly “ disconcert the systematists.” 
