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The males congregate and form "corroborying places," where they sing, raising and spreading their tails like peacocks, and drooping their wings. Gould, 'Handbook to the Birds of Australia, vol. i. 1865, pp. 308-310. See also Mr. Of our British birds, excepting the bullfinch and goldfinch, the best songsters are plain-coloured.

They were about the size of chaffinches for the most part; but while some were of the richest crimson, others were blue and green and violet, and a dozen other shades of colour mixed up in the loveliest way. "Now what are those, Nat?" said my uncle. "I don't know, sir," I very naturally said. "What would they be if they were in England and only plain-coloured?"

Doubtless all birds were originally plain-coloured, without ornaments and without melody, and it is assumed that so it would always have been in many cases but for the action of this principle, which, like natural selection, has gone on accumulating countless small variations, tending to give a greater lustre to the species in each case, and resulting in all that we most admire in the animal world the Rupicola's flame-coloured mantle, the peacock's crest and starry train, the joyous melody of the lark, and the pretty or fantastic dancing performances of birds.

During the spring the males, as previously described, strut about before the comparatively plain-coloured females, expanding and erecting their tail and wing-feathers, which are ornamented with numerous ocelli. P. hardwickii possesses a peculiar top-knot, which is also somewhat like that of the Java peacock.

Or did you separate them nicely, and arrange the pink and salmon peas with the lavender in that plain-coloured Sevres vase that is unusually accommodating in the matter of water, then putting the gay colours in the blue-and-white Delft bowl and the duller ones in cut glass to give them life?

In other groups both sexes are equally plain-coloured and unornamented. Lastly, in some few anomalous cases, the females are more beautiful than the males. We shall often find, in the same group of birds, every gradation from no difference between the sexes, to an extreme difference.

The pastures are destitute of flowers, and also of animal life, with the exception of a few small plain-coloured birds and solitary Caracara eagles whining from the topmost branches of dead trees on the forest borders. A few settlers have built their palm- thatched and mud-walled huts on the banks of the Mahica, and occupy themselves chiefly in tending small herds of cattle.

In the allied genus Eubagis, both sexes of some of the species are plain-coloured and nearly alike; whilst with the greater number the males are decorated with beautiful metallic tints in a diversified manner, and differ much from their females.