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The Descent of Man.
Part II.

able to discover whether with these species the young resemble the adult males more closely than the adult females; for the comparison is somewhat difficult to make on account of the double moult.

Turning now to the Ostrich order: the male of the common cassowary (Casuarius galeatus) would be thought by any one to be the female, from his smaller size and from the appendages and naked skin about his head being much less brightly coloured; and I am informed by Mr. Bartlett that in the Zoological Gardens, it is certainly the male alone who sits on the eggs and takes care of the young.[1] The female is said by Mr. T. W. Wood[2] to exhibit during the breeding season a most pugnacious disposition; and her wattles then become enlarged and more brilliantly coloured. So again the female of one of the emus (Dromœus irroratus) is considerably larger than the male, and she possesses a slight top-knot, but is otherwise indistinguishable in plumage. She appears, however, "to have greater power, when angry or otherwise excited, of erecting, like a turkey-cock, the feathers of her neck and breast. She is usually the more courageous and pugilistic. She makes a deep hollow guttural boom especially at night, sounding like a small gong. The male has a slenderer frame and is more docile, with no voice beyond a suppressed hiss when angry, or a croak." He not only performs the whole duty of incubation, but has to defend the young from their mother; "for as soon as she catches sight of her progeny she becomes violently agitated, and notwithstanding the resistance of the father appears to use her utmost endeavours to destroy them. For months afterwards it is unsafe to put the parents together, violent quarrels being the inevitable result, in which the female generally comes off conqueror."[3] So that with this emu we have a complete reversal not only of the parental and incubating instincts, but of the usual moral qualities of the two sexes; the females being savage, quarrelsome, and noisy, the males gentle and good. The case is very different with the African ostrich, for the male is somewhat larger than the female and has finer


    it is, as he informs me, with Limosa lapponica and some few other Waders, in which the females are larger and have more strongly contrasted colours than the males.

  1. The natives of Ceram (Wallace, 'Malay Archipelago,' vol. ii. p. 150) assert that the male and female sit alternately on the eggs; but this assertion, as Mr. Bartlett thinks, may be accounted for by the female visiting the nest to lay her eggs.
  2. 'The Student,' April, 1870, p. 124.
  3. See the excellent account of the habits of this bird under confinement, by Mr. A. W. Bennett, in 'Land and Water,' May, 1868, p. 233.