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Here we embarked on a comfortable steamer, and sailed nearly twenty-four hours down the incomparable Ocklawaha River, through scenes that are indescribably picturesque; under arches of gigantic trees covered with sombrely beautiful Spanish mosses and trumpet creeper vines, where all day long are heard the ecstatic songs of mockingbirds, and where flutter the plumages of all the colors of the rainbow.
Do the slight differences between the females of the common pheasant, the Japan and gold pheasants, serve as a protection, or might not their plumages have been interchanged with impunity? From what Mr. Wallace has observed of the habits of certain gallinaceous birds in the East, he thinks that such slight differences are beneficial. For myself, I will only say that I am not convinced.
When the difference between the two plumages is slight it may perhaps be attributed, as already remarked, to the direct action of the conditions of life. But with many birds there can hardly be a doubt that the summer plumage is ornamental, even when both sexes are alike.
"I can answer that question," said Olive; "don't you remember, father, when we were in Colorado, the same year we found the Sage Thrasher and Rock Wren, that I thought the first one we saw was a Scarlet Tanager in one of its patch-work plumages, till you told me about it though it did seem to be too bright yellow, and the middle of the back was black.
It may be suggested that the widely different conditions of life during the winter and summer have acted in a direct manner on the plumage; this may have had some effect, but I have not much confidence in so great a difference as we sometimes see between the two plumages, having been thus caused.
Some of the phenomena surpassed anything Wilhelmina ever saw: such floods and rows of resplendent people crowding in to dinner; and she could not but contrast the splendor of the Polish retinues and their plumages and draperies, with the strait-buttoned Prussian dignitaries, all in mere soldier uniform, succinct "blue coat, white linen gaiters," and no superfluity even in the epaulettes and red facings.
In all these cases, the nuptial plumage which we may assume was originally acquired by the adult males during the breeding-season, and transmitted to the adults of both sexes at the corresponding season, has been modified, whilst the winter and immature plumages have been left unchanged.
Or the young may have an intermediate character; or again they may differ greatly from the adults in both their seasonal plumages. VI. In some few cases the young in their first plumage differ from each other according to sex; the young males resembling more or less closely the adult males, and the young females more or less closely the adult females.
Lastly, in regard to the young differing greatly from both sexes in their adult summer and winter plumages, this occurs with some herons and egrets of North America and India, the young alone being white. I will make only a few remarks on these complicated cases.
Then, if ever, we realize that the time of the bird and the beast is passing, the acme of evolution for these wonderful beings is reached, and at most we can preserve only a small fragment of them. To the millinery hunter, what the egret is to America, and the bird of paradise to New Guinea, the impeyan pheasant is to India the most coveted of all plumages.
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