In general, nature is, in the bird world, favourable to the male. He is a prince whose wife appears morganatic. Often smaller, as the female canepetiere (a sort of bustard), while the female garden warbler is nearly always clothed as Cinderella. The birds which women have massacred in millions in order to deck themselves as parrots and jays, are male birds for the most part; their sisters bear more modest clothing, and one would say that this humility, become favourable to their species, had been developed by nature in provision of human stupidity and badheartedness. The gold-yellow oriole with black wings and tail, has for mate a brown sparrow with grey and greenish touches. The silver pheasant (a false pheasant) has a black tuft standing up from his silver-white nape, his neck and back are of the same metal; his dark belly has a blue shimmer, his beak is blue, his cheeks red, and his feet, red. The smaller female covers her belly sadly in a whitish chemise, her back is russet. In the true pheasant the dimorphism is still more marked. The large, proud male (we are dealing with the common pheasant) who has no objection to being admired, is deep green on nape and neck, copper-red with violet shimmer on back, flanks, belly and breast; his tail russet with black bands, a reddish brown tuft spreads from his head, and the eye-circle is vivid red. The much smaller female has an earthy plumage speckled with black. The fair Golden Pheasant is really all golden over green. His yellow tail and wings and his saffron red belly complete this marvellous masculine splendour. The female must content herself with burnt sienna back-covering which comes down onto her ochre-coloured belly. A little head projecting from an enormous neck-circle of white out-puffing feathers, middle sized body, and long legs. It is the combatant (ruff-bird). One must add a tapering beak, ornamented at the base by a sort of red grape. One can't say what colour the male is, he is of all colours. One leaves him white, and finds him red; he was black, and is violet; later he will be speckled or banded in most varied hues. His ruff is an ornament and a defence; he loses both it and his red grape with the passing of his fighting and loving season. This instability of feathering accords curiously with the instability of his character; no animal is more irritable or cantankerous. One can not keep him captive save solitary and in obscurity. The female, somewhat less turbulent never changes her vestment, an invariable gray, with a small amount of brown on the back. Peacocks and turkey-cocks alone can spread wheel-wise their fan-tails, as also the cock bustard; they alone are provided with great wattles. The menure hen lifts, as the cock, a lyre of feathers, but it is a tarnished and mediocre imitation of her master's, which glistens in all shades rising and curving with such paradoxical grace.