surface, with the lores and sides of the throat crimson; the female
Eulampis jugularis has the top of the head and back green, but the
loins and the tail are crimson. Many other instances of highly
conspicuous females could be given. See Mr. Gould s magnificent work on
this family.)
In regard to birds which build in holes or construct domed nests, other
advantages, as Mr. Wallace remarks, besides concealment are gained,
such as shelter from the rain, greater warmth, and in hot countries
protection from the sun (14. Mr. Salvin noticed in Guatemala ( Ibis,
1864, p. 375) that humming-birds were much more unwilling to leave
their nests during very hot weather, when the sun was shining brightly,
as if their eggs would be thus injured, than during cool, cloudy, or
rainy weather.); so that it is no valid objection to his view that many
birds having both sexes obscurely coloured build concealed nests. (15.
I may specify, as instances of dull-coloured birds building concealed
nests, the species belonging to eight Australian genera described in
Gould s Handbook of the Birds of Australia, vol. i. pp. 340, 362,
365, 383, 387, 389, 391, 414.) The female Horn-bill (Buceros), for
instance, of India and Africa is protected during incubation with
extraordinary care, for she plasters up with her own excrement the
orifice of the hole in which she sits on her eggs, leaving only a small
orifice through which the male feeds her; she is thus kept a close
prisoner during the whole period of incubation (16. Mr. C. Horne,
Proc. Zoolog. Soc. 1869. p. 243.); yet female horn-bills 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 Grallinae of Australia, the
Superb Warblers (Maluridae) of the same country, the Sun-birds
(Nectariniae), and with several of the Australian Honey-suckers or
Meliphagidae. (17. On the nidification and colours of these latter
species, see Gould s Handbook to the Birds of Australia, vol. i. pp.
504, 527.)
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 which is constructed. About forty of our British birds
(excluding those of large size which could defend themselves) build in
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