CHAPTER XVI.
BIRDS--concluded.
The immature plumage in relation to the character of the plumage in both sexes when adult--Six classes of cases--Sexual differences between the males of closely-allied or representative species--The female assuming the characters of the male--Plumage of the young in relation to the summer and winter plumage of the adults--On the increase of beauty in the birds of the world--Protective colouring--Conspicuously coloured birds--Novelty appreciated--Summary of the four chapters on Birds.
We must now consider the transmission of characters, as limited by age, in reference to sexual selection. The truth and importance of the principle of inheritance at corresponding ages need not here be discussed, as enough has already been said on the subject. Before giving the several rather complex rules or classes of cases, under which the differences in plumage between the young and the old, as far as known to me, may be included, it will be well to make a few preliminary remarks.
With animals of all kinds when the adults differ in colour from the young, and the colours of the latter are not, as far as we can see, of any special service, they may generally be attributed, like various embryological structures, to the retention of a former character. But this view can be maintained with confidence, only when the young of several species resemble each other closely, and likewise resemble other adult species belonging to the same group; for the latter are the living proofs that such a state of things was formerly possible. Young lions and pumas are marked with feeble stripes or rows of spots, and as many allied species both young and old are similarly marked, no believer in evolution will doubt that the progenitor of the lion and puma was a striped animal, and that the young have retained vestiges of the stripes, like the kittens of black cats, which are not in the least striped when grown up. Many species of deer, which when mature are not spotted, are whilst young covered with white spots, as are likewise some few species in the adult state. So again the young in the whole family of pigs (Suidae), and in certain rather distantly allied animals, such as the tapir, are marked with dark longitudinal stripes; but here we have a character apparently derived from an extinct progenitor, and now preserved by the young alone. In all such cases the old have had their colours changed in the course of time, whilst the young have remained but little altered, and this has been effected through the principle of inheritance at corresponding ages.
This same principle applies to many birds belonging to various groups, in which the young closely resemble each other, and differ much from their respective adult parents. The young of almost all the Gallinaceae, and of some distantly allied birds such as ostriches, are covered with longitudinally striped down; but this character points back to a state of things so remote that it hardly concerns us. Young cross-bills (Loxia) have at first straight beaks like those of other finches, and in their immature striated plumage they resemble the mature red-pole and female siskin, as well as the young of the goldfinch, greenfinch, and some other allied species. The young of many kinds of buntings (Emberiza) resemble one another, and likewise the adult state of the common bunting, E. miliaria. In almost the whole large group of thrushes the young have their breasts spotted--a character which is retained throughout life by many species, but is quite lost by others, as by the Turdus migratorius. So again with many thrushes, the feathers on the back are mottled before they are moulted for the first time, and this character is retained for life by certain eastern species. The young of many species of shrikes (Lanius), of some woodpeckers, and of an Indian pigeon (Chalcophaps indicus), are transversely striped on the under surface; and certain allied species or whole genera are similarly marked when adult. In some closely-allied and resplendent Indian cuckoos (Chrysococcyx), the mature species differ considerably from one another in colour, but the young cannot be distinguished.