The reason of this phenomenon is not difficult to find, if we consider the essential conditions of a bird's existence, and the most important function it has to fulfil. In order that the species may be continued, young birds must be produced, and the female birds have to sit assiduously on their eggs. While doing this they are exposed to observation and attack by the numerous devourers of eggs and birds, and it is of vital importance that they should be protectively coloured in all those parts of the body which are exposed during incubation. To secure this end all the bright colours and showy ornaments which decorate the male have not been acquired by the female, who often remains clothed in the sober hues which were probably once common to the whole order to which she belongs. The different amounts of colour acquired by the females have no doubt depended on peculiarities of habits and of environment, and on the powers of defence or of concealment possessed by the species. Mr. Darwin has taught us that natural selection cannot produce absolute, but only relative perfection; and as a protective colour is only one out of many means by which the female birds are able to provide for the safety of their young, those which are best endowed in other respects will have been allowed to acquire more colour than those with whom the struggle for existence is more severe. _Relation of Sex Colour to Nesting Habits._ This principle is strikingly illustrated by the existence of considerable numbers of birds in which both sexes are similarly and brilliantly coloured,--in some cases as brilliantly as the males of many of the groups above referred to. Such are the extensive families of the kingfishers, the woodpeckers, the toucans, the parrots, the turacos, the hangnests, the starlings, and many other smaller groups, all the species of which are conspicuously or brilliantly coloured, while in all of them the females are either coloured exactly like the males, or, when differently coloured, are equally conspicuous. When searching for some cause for this singular apparent exception to the rule of female protective colouring, I came upon a fact which beautifully explains it; for in all these cases, without exception, the species either nests in holes in the ground or in trees, or builds a domed or covered nest, so as completely to conceal the sitting-bird. We have here a case exactly parallel to that of the butterflies protected by distastefulness, whose females are either exactly like the males, or, if different, are equally conspicuous. We can hardly believe that so exact a parallel should exist between such remote classes of animals, except under the influence of a general law; and, in the need of protection by all defenceless animals, and especially by most female insects and birds, we have such a law, which has been proved to have influenced the colours of a considerable proportion of the animal kingdom.[122]