United States or Saudi Arabia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
And this effect of artificial heat in connection with absence of sunlight has a similar effect on animal life, the plumage of the birds being a pure white. But in the appearance of animals the summer sun does not produce much change in that of birds, none whatever.
In the female of the Urosticte I noticed extremely minute or rudimental white tips to the two outer of the four central black tail- feathers; so that here we have an indication of change of some kind in the plumage of this species. If we grant the possibility of the central tail- feathers of the male varying in whiteness, there is nothing strange in such variations having been sexually selected.
Meanwhile we were both kneeling beside the first, which had fallen in a patch of open ground where the sun came down, and I shall never forget the delight with which I gazed at its wonderfully beautiful plumage. "A pigeon, you see, Nat," said my uncle; "and a fine one too." "Is that a pigeon, uncle?" I said wonderingly. "To be sure it is, my boy, and " Crack!
A gas fire was alight, but before it had been placed an ornate Japanese screen whereon birds of dazzling plumage hovered amid the leaves of gilded palm trees. In the centre of the room stood a small card-table, and upon it were a large brass tray and an ivory pedestal exquisitely carved in the form of a nude figure having one arm upraised.
His head, neck, and upper breast are black, while the rest of his plumage is quaker brown, save for a broad white wing-bar, very conspicuous during flight, and some white in the tail. The legs and bill look as though they had been dipped in the mustard pot, and there is a bare patch of mustard-coloured skin on either side of the head. This sprightly bird is sociably inclined.
Nicholas was right; it was perfectly dark on their arrival at Callonby, and Miss O'Dowd having dismounted, and shook her plumage, a little crumpled by her half-recumbent position for eight miles, appeared in the drawing-room, to receive the most courteous attentions from Lady Callonby, and from his lordship the most flattering speeches for her kindness in risking herself and bringing her horses on such a dreadful road, and assured her of his getting a presentment the very next assizes to repair it; "For we intend, Miss O'Dowd," said he, "to be most troublesome neighbours to you in future."
According to the recollection I have of it, it was as large as the solitary Snipe, and the bill was a little longer; the general appearance of the plumage on the wings and back resembled a dark- coloured Woodcock; but under the wings the fine blue inner coverts exactly resembled those of the Snipe.
And all the time for her, as well as for man, calves and lambs are being emasculated to make her meat succulent; wild animals are painfully done to death to provide her table with delicacies; birds with young in the nest are shot so that she may parade in their plumage; or fur-bearing animals are for her comfort and adornment massacred and tortured in traps.
Rugged alligators, like animated trunks of fallen trees, crawled in slimy beds or ploughed up the sands of the shore in deep furrows, while birds of gorgeous plumage and graceful sometimes clumsy form audibly, if not always visibly, united to chant their morning hymn.
The next case is bright with the gleaming plumage of the New Guinea crows, or birds of paradise; and here, too, are the curious grakles the foetid and the bare-necked from South America; and the Alpine and red-legged crows, or choughs, of elevated lands.
Word Of The Day