plumage. She appears, however, to have greater power, when angry or
otherwise excited, of erecting, like a turkey-cock, the feathers of her
neck and breast. She is usually the more courageous and pugilistic. She
makes a deep hollow guttural boom especially at night, sounding like a
small gong. The male has a slenderer frame and is more docile, with no
voice beyond a suppressed hiss when angry, or a croak. He not only
performs the whole duty of incubation, but has to defend the young from
their mother; for as soon as she catches sight of her progeny she
becomes violently agitated, and notwithstanding the resistance of the
father appears to use her utmost endeavours to destroy them. For months
afterwards it is unsafe to put the parents together, violent quarrels
being the inevitable result, in which the female generally comes off
conqueror. (23. See the excellent account of the habits of this bird
under confinement, by Mr. A.W. Bennett, in Land and Water, May 1868,
p. 233.) So that with this emu we have a complete reversal not only of
the parental and incubating instincts, but of the usual moral qualities
of the two sexes; the females being savage, quarrelsome, and noisy, the
males gentle and good. The case is very different with the African
ostrich, for the male is somewhat larger than the female and has finer
plumes with more strongly contrasted colours; nevertheless he
undertakes the whole duty of incubation. (24. Mr. Sclater, on the
incubation of the Struthiones, Proc. Zool. Soc. June 9, 1863. So it
is with the Rhea darwinii: Captain Musters says ( At Home with the
Patagonians, 1871, p. 128), that the male is larger, stronger and
swifter than the female, and of slightly darker colours; yet he takes
sole charge of the eggs and of the young, just as does the male of the
common species of Rhea.)
I will specify the few other cases known to me, in which the female is
more conspicuously coloured than the male, although nothing is known
about the manner of incubation. With the carrion-hawk of the Falkland
Islands (Milvago leucurus) I was much surprised to find by dissection
that the individuals, which had all their tints strongly pronounced,
with the cere and legs orange-coloured, were the adult females; whilst
those with duller plumage and grey legs were the males or the young. In
an Australian tree-creeper (Climacteris erythrops) the female differs
from the male in being adorned with beautiful, radiated, rufous
markings on the throat, the male having this part quite plain. Lastly,
in an Australian night-jar the female always exceeds the male in size
and in the brilliance of her tints; the males, on the other hand, have
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