It Is Only After
These Changes Are Fully Completed That The Red Side Plumes Begin
To Appear.
The successive stages of development of the colours and plumage
of the Birds of Paradise are very interesting, from
The striking
manner in which they accord with the theory of their having been
produced by the simple action of variation, and the cumulative
power of selection by the females, of those male birds which were
more than usually ornamental. Variations of _colour_ are of all
others the most frequent and the most striking, and are most
easily modified and accumulated by man's selection of them. We
should expect, therefore, that the sexual differences of _colour_
would be those most early accumulated and fixed, and would
therefore appear soonest in the young birds; and this is exactly
what occurs in the Paradise Birds. Of all variations in the
_form_ of birds' feathers, none are so frequent as those in the
head and tail. These occur more, or less in every family of
birds, and are easily produced in many domesticated varieties,
while unusual developments of the feathers of the body are rare
in the whole class of birds, and have seldom or never occurred in
domesticated species. In accordance with these facts, we find the
scale-formed plumes of the throat, the crests of the head, and
the long cirrhi of the tail, all fully developed before the
plumes which spring from the side of the body begin to mane their
appearance. If, on the other hand, the male Paradise Birds have
not acquired their distinctive plumage by successive variations,
but have been as they are mow from the moment they first appeared
upon the earth, this succession becomes at the least
unintelligible to us, for we can see no reason why the changes
should not take place simultaneously, or in a reverse order to
that in which they actually occur.
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