axillary feathers; and does not completely assume the uniform black
colour of the male for three years. The same excellent observer remarks
that in the spring of the second year the female spoon-bill (Platalea)
of China resembles the male of the first year, and that apparently it
is not until the third spring that she acquires the same adult plumage
as that possessed by the male at a much earlier age. The female
Bombycilla carolinensis differs very little from the male, but the
appendages, which like beads of red sealing-wax ornament the
wing-feathers (30. When the male courts the female, these ornaments are
vibrated, and are shewn off to great advantage, on the outstretched
wings: A. Leith Adams, Field and Forest Rambles, 1873, p. 153.), are
not developed in her so early in life as in the male. In the male of an
Indian parrakeet (Palaeornis javanicus) the upper mandible is coral-red
from his earliest youth, but in the female, as Mr. Blyth has observed
with caged and wild birds, it is at first black and does not become red
until the bird is at least a year old, at which age the sexes resemble
each other in all respects. Both sexes of the wild turkey are
ultimately furnished with a tuft of bristles on the breast, but in
two-year-old birds the tuft is about four inches long in the male and
hardly apparent in the female; when, however, the latter has reached
her fourth year, it is from four to five inches in length. (31. On
Ardetta, Translation of Cuvier s Regne Animal, by Mr. Blyth,
footnote, p. 159. On the Peregrine Falcon, Mr. Blyth, in Charlesworth s
Mag. of Nat. Hist. vol. i. 1837, p. 304. On Dicrurus, Ibis, 1863,
p. 44. On the Platalea, Ibis, vol. vi. 1864, p. 366. On the
Bombycilla, Audubon s Ornitholog. Biography, vol. i. p. 229. On the
Palaeornis, see, also, Jerdon, Birds of India, vol. i. p. 263. On the
wild turkey, Audubon, ibid. vol. i. p. 15; but I hear from Judge Caton
that in Illinois the female very rarely acquires a tuft. Analogous
cases with the females of Petrocossyphus are given by Mr. R. Sharpe,
Proceedings of the Zoological Society, 1872, p. 496.)
These cases must not be confounded with those where diseased or old
females abnormally assume masculine characters, nor with those where
fertile females, whilst young, acquire the characters of the male,
through variation or some unknown cause. (32. Of these latter cases Mr.
Blyth has recorded (Translation of Cuvier s Regne Animal, p. 158)
various instances with Lanius, Ruticilla, Linaria, and Anas. Audubon
has also recorded a similar case ( Ornitholog. Biography, vol. v. p.
519) with Pyranga aestiva.) But all these cases have so much in common
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