The splendor of plumage which characterizes the male pheasants is entirely wanting in the females. The intense crimsons and pure whites, the gorgeous purples and blues of the male chatterers contrast strikingly with the dull browns or olive greens of the females. The sober hues of the females have been accentuated by Natural Selection.[12] When the females were brooding on the eggs in their nests, those of them that had varied in the direction of conspicuousness would most readily be detected by their enemies, the hawks, and would be exterminated; but those that had quiet and dull ornamentation would most frequently escape discovery, and would pass successfully through the brooding season; thus living and transmitting their color patterns to posterity,—Natural Selection ever eliminating the conspicuous and preserving the sober-hued,—in the course of time the dull ornamentation of the females would become more and more pronounced. [Illustration: PLATE VIII.—Male and Female Paradise Birds (_Paradisea minor_). Illustrating the effects of Sexual Selection. The upper figure (male bird) is much more beautiful than the lower (female bird).] But another factor has been at work in accentuating the marked differences in the ornamentation of the sexes. This factor is Sexual Selection.[13] In the brooding season there is an intense rivalry among the males for the possession of the females. Among them the art of courting has become, indeed, one of the fine arts. The male birds, like the males of almost all animals, have stronger passions than the females, and with rarest exceptions are much more eager than the females. In courtship they display their adornments and accomplishments most zealously before the females; they strut around them in most eager courtship and pompous vanity, displaying the utmost rivalry. The males charm the females in various ways, such as dancing, or performing fantastic antics either in the air or on the ground; and then again by most melodious song. After man, the female birds appear to be the most æsthetic of all animals; therefore, those male birds that are the most pleasing songsters, or the most attractive in their dances and fantastic performances, are the ones selected by the females for mating. In this selection the female birds have paid the minutest attention to fleeting fashions in strut and dance, in form and color,—the progeny of those males that have been selected by the females for mating, transmitting the inherited peculiarities of the parents, have tended more and more to stamp as fixtures these fleeting fashions, and in this way the males have become endowed with all sorts of decorations and accomplishments.[14] Thus have been produced in them the many forms of topknots, wattles, combs, plumes, and feathers elongated and springing gracefully from many portions of the body; also the naked skin of the head and the beak, frequently colored gorgeously. The feathers, through this means, are