. The bird, its form and function . Fig. 223.—Ruff with battle-rlfntk jjartly moulted. were adorned respecti\Tly,—])lain gray, dotted gray,chestnut barred with black, and a rich golden no females were present, yet their fighting instinctoften cropped out and a pair of them would dart and side-step about each other, l)ills held low and far advanced,ruff spread out from the breast and traihng low, liidingalmost the whole bod^^ Now and then one of the fencei-swould make a vicious dash, sending his bill through the 28o The Bird feather shield of his op{)oiieiil. But the force of theb
. The bird, its form and function . Fig. 223.—Ruff with battle-rlfntk jjartly moulted. were adorned respecti\Tly,—])lain gray, dotted gray,chestnut barred with black, and a rich golden no females were present, yet their fighting instinctoften cropped out and a pair of them would dart and side-step about each other, l)ills held low and far advanced,ruff spread out from the breast and traihng low, liidingalmost the whole bod^^ Now and then one of the fencei-swould make a vicious dash, sending his bill through the 28o The Bird feather shield of his op{)oiieiil. But the force of theblow would spend itself on the inch of space between theshield and the feathers of the birds breast. When, inhis native haunts, the Ruff has conquered his rival, histriumphant dances before the female are most these facts are not exactly pertinent to the physical. Fir, 224.—Breast ornament of a Wild Tiirkeveock. Ufe of the bird, yet I mention them to show to what prac-tical, as well as aesthetic, uses the development of someportion of the lairds plumage may l^ie devoted. What a contrast to the cloak of the Ruff is the pectoraldecoration of the ^^ild Turkeycock: a great tuft ofcoarse, black hair-like feathers, like the tail of a horse Heads and Necks 281 in miniature, growing almost a foot in lengtli from thecentre of the breast! The length of the neck of birds is often correlatedwith that of the legs,—a long-legged bird of necessit\- re-quiring a long neck to permit its bill to reach the and swans are an exception, and in their case we
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Keywords: ., bookauthorbeebewil, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookyear1906
