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By a little further acceleration in the process, the double moult would be completely lost. See Macgillivray, 'Hist. Some male birds, as before stated, become more brightly coloured in the spring, not by a vernal moult, but either by an actual change of colour in the feathers, or by their obscurely-coloured deciduary margins being shed.
With certain bustards and plovers the vernal moult is far from complete, some feathers being renewed, and some changed in colour. There is also reason to believe that with certain bustards and rail-like birds, which properly undergo a double moult, some of the older males retain their nuptial plumage throughout the year.
In either case there seems to be an intimate connection between the music and the spirit of the public for which it is provided. The peasant of the Campagna and of the Latian, Alban and Sabine hills takes his pleasure, even that of the dance, as an impertinent Frenchman said of us Anglo-Saxons, moult tristement.
Behold, as they approach the southern mid-winter of the Horn, when they have need of all their feathers, they proceed to moult, because, forsooth, this is the summer time in the land they came from. Or is moulting determined by the time of year they happen to be born? I shall have to look into this. Margaret will know. Yesterday ominous preparations were made for the passage of the Horn.
In a few cases birds begin to migrate before this moulting takes place, but with the great majority the moult is complete before they leave their summer homes. Why Birds Migrate. Why birds migrate we can only conjecture.
Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter, where moult the wings which will bear it farther than suns and stars." We must remember, too, that "the calamities are our friends. Try the rough water as well as the smooth. Rough water can teach lessons worth knowing. Don't be so tender at making an enemy now and then.
It is also an interesting fact, as bearing on sexual selection, that the stridulating organs of certain male Orthoptera are not fully developed until the last moult; and that the colours of certain male dragon-flies are not fully developed until some little time after their emergence from the pupal state, and when they are ready to breed.
These habits confirm the opinion, which I have already expressed elsewhere, that most Spiders have the faculty of seeing by day and night, like cats. 'On the 28th of June, my Tarantula cast his skin. It was his last moult and did not perceptibly alter either the colour of his attire or the dimensions of his body. On the 14th of July, I had to leave Valencia; and I stayed away until the 23rd.
In twelve hours after the last moult it turns around with its head towards the posterior end of the body of its host, and in another twelve hours, having become full-fed, it bores through the skin of the young, eats its way through the brood-covering of the cell and falls to the bottom of the hive, where it changes to a pupa in the dust and dirt, or else creeps out of the door and transforms in the earth.
For three days he grew yellower and yellower. Then his skin split down his back, and he successfully accomplished his first moult. In his short span he passed through many changes, but never one more quaint than this. During his abstinence he had grown two horns. They branched straight out before him, bristling with short spines, a full third of his length.
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