184 
BIRD-LIFE. 
the reverse, however, with the female; she has duties of 
greater importance to perform than the male; she lays 
her brown-coloured eggs on the ground, has to hatch 
them, and then watch over the fortunes of her chicks; 
she wears a rusty-coloured dress, which may easily 
be mistaken for a piece of fir-bark, and is never found 
beyond the limits of the dark forests. The same also 
holds good in the case of the Blackcock, though not 
with the other members of the family whose plumage is 
the same in both sexes. Let us mention yet another of 
Europe’s gallinaceous birds, the Quail, for the Hemipode 
(Turnix gibraltaiensis ) of Andalusia is a form foreign to 
Europe. This bird unmistakeably shows the impress of 
a temperate land, for almost all the allied forms found in 
other quarters of the globe are larger or smaller and 
brighter or simpler in their colouring. The Dipper 
(Cinclus aquaticus) is somewhat less characteristic, although, 
as the tutelar divinity of the brooks and waterfalls of our 
highlands, its absence would be as much marked as that 
of its cousin on terra firma . He that has once met with 
this bird misses it sadly when absent from its home. 
Our friend the Starling also belongs to the list, and we 
would even grant a place to the impudent Sparrow, though 
it is also to be found as a permanent inhabitant of other 
quarters of the globe, for it only displays its true character 
when in contact with civilized man. Amongst aquatic 
birds there are several which we may claim as our own. 
Two of them are thoroughly characteristic—the Swan and 
the Eider Duck. A fish-pond without Swans is bereft of 
one of its chief charms, and the Northern Sea without 
the Eider Duck would lose much of its poetry. This bird, 
however, is typical not only of the icy islands of Northern 
Europe, but may almost be regarded as a domestic 
