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"Alas, poor Jack!" "And what's more, your worship, he is pugnax, bellicosus, gladiator, a fire-eater and swash-buckler, beyond all Christian measure; a very sucking Entellus, Sir Richard, and will do to death some of her majesty's lieges erelong, if he be not wisely curbed. "Eh?
Weir, J. Jenner, on the nightingale and blackcap; on the relative sexual maturity of male birds; on female pigeons deserting a feeble mate; on three starlings frequenting the same nest; on the proportion of the sexes in Machetes pugnax and other birds; on the coloration of the Triphaenae; on the rejection of certain caterpillars by birds; on sexual differences of the beak in the goldfinch; on a piping bullfinch; on the object of the nightingale's song; on song-birds; on the pugnacity of male fine-plumaged birds; on the courtship of birds; on the finding of new mates by Peregrine falcons and Kestrels; on the bullfinch and starling; on the cause of birds remaining unpaired; on starlings and parrots living in triplets; on recognition of colour by birds; on hybrid birds; on the selection of a greenfinch by a female canary; on a case of rivalry of female bullfinches; on the maturity of the golden pheasant.
RUFF. Machetes pugnax, Linnaeus. French, "Combatant," "Combatant variable." The Ruff is an occasional but not very common autumn and winter visitant; it occurs, probably, more frequently in the autumn than the winter. Mr. MacCulloch writes me, "I have a note of a Ruff shot in October, 1871."
There is also a great difference with many birds in the length of time during which the two annual plumages are retained; so that the one might come to be retained for the whole year, and the other completely lost. Thus in the spring Machetes pugnax retains his ruff for barely two months. Most species, which undergo a double moult, keep their ornamental feathers for about six months.
Machetes, sexes and young of. Machetes pugnax, supposed to be polygamous; numerical proportion of the sexes in; pugnacity of the male; double moult in. McIntosh, Dr., colours of the Nemertians. McKennan, marriage customs of Koraks. Mackintosh, on the moral sense.
But on the other hand I should think a good many of the young must be driven off to seek quarters elsewhere by their most pugnacious parents, for of all birds the Robin is by far the most pugnacious with which I am acquainted, and deserves the name of "pugnax" much more than the Ruff, and in a limited space like Jethou and Herm battles between the old and the young would be constant unless some of the young departed altogether from the Island.
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