The Descent of Man

monstration that a gradation is possible. Bearing
in mind how carefully the male Argus
pheasant displays his plumes before the female,
as well as the many facts rendering it probable
that female birds prefer the more attractive males,
no one who admits the agency of sexual
selection in any case will deny that a simple
dark spot with some fulvous shading might be
converted, through the approximation and
modification of two adjoining spots, together
with some slight increase of colour, into one of
the so- called elliptic ornaments. These latter
ornaments have been shewn to many persons,
and all have admitted that they are beautiful,
some thinking them even more so than the balland-socket
ocelli. As the secondary plumes
became lengthened through sexual selection,
and as the elliptic ornaments increased in diameter,
their colours apparently became less
bright; and then the ornamentation of the plumes
had to be gained by an improvement in the
pattern and shading; and this process was ca-