The same law manifests itself in Birds. The female while sitting on her eggs requires protection by concealment to a much greater extent than the male; and we accordingly find that in a large majority of the cases in which the male birds are distinguished by unusual brilliancy of plumage, the females are much more obscure, and often remarkably plain-coloured. The exceptions are such as eminently to prove the rule, for in most cases we can see a very good reason for them. In particular, there are a few instances among wading and gallinaceous birds in which the female has decidedly more brilliant colours than the male; but it is a most curious and interesting fact that in most if not all these cases the males sit upon the eggs; so that this exception to the usual rule almost demonstrates that it is because the process of incubation is at once very important and very dangerous, that the protection of obscure colouring is developed. The most striking example is that of the gray phalarope (Phalaropus fulicarius). When in winter plumage, the sexes of this bird are alike in colouration, but in summer the female is much the most conspicuous, having a black head, dark wings, and reddish-brown back, while the male is nearly uniform brown, with dusky spots. Mr. Gould in his “Birds of Great Britain” figures the two sexes in both winter and summer plumage, and remarks on the strange peculiarity of the usual colours of the two sexes being reversed, and also on the still more curious fact that the “male alone sits on the eggs,” which are deposited on the bare ground. In another British bird, the dotterell, the female is also larger and more brightly-coloured than the male; and it seems to be proved that the males assist in incubation even if they do not perform it entirely, for Mr. Gould tells us, “that they have been shot with the breast bare of feathers, caused by sitting on the eggs.” The small quail-like birds forming the genus Turnix have also generally large and bright-coloured females, and we are told by Mr. Jerdon in his “Birds of India” that “the natives report that during the breeding season the females desert their eggs and associate in flocks while the males are employed in hatching the eggs.” It is ............