806 0)1 Female Pheasants assum'mg the Male Plumage. 



development we cannot therefore follow, liad it not presented a 

 great degree of interest under another point of view. The spur, 

 a part peculiar to the malej was present in it, and was even near- 

 ly as large as it usually is in ordinary males. 



We therefore see that the spur itself is not so much the ex- 

 clusive property of the males in pheasants, that it may not 

 equally exist in certain females, and thus, a hen-pheasant may 

 not only become invested with the precise plumage of the male, 

 in a certain period of time, but it may even assume all its other 

 external characters, the narrowness of the red membrane sur- 

 rounding the eye remaining the only indication of its true sex. 



General RemarJcs.-^lt is not a very uncommon thing to see 

 the spur anomalously developed in females of species, the males 

 of which are furnished with that organ, and particularly in the 

 common domestic fowl ; but in this case, besides being commonly 

 of smaller size than in the male, it almost constantly bears the 

 character of an anomalous, and, as it were, diseased organ. Thus, 

 the two spurs in hens are commonly very unequal in size ; and 

 it even sometimes happens, that, while one leg has a spur, the 

 other has none. Hence it happens, that the sole inspection of 

 the spur in a female resembling the male in possessing that 

 organ, may of itself lead to a knowledge of its true sex, with- 

 out having reference to any other character. 



The pheasant being reduced to a state of domesticity, like the 

 common fowl, and approaching it closely in its organization, it 

 were easy to foresee that it would turn out the same in this re- 

 spect; and of the accuracy of this analogical conjecture, we 

 have seen a proof in the collared pheasant. Its spurs differ in 

 form from those of the male ; the left is much larger than the 

 other, but it is slender, and, as it were, embossed over its whole 

 surface. 



Be this as it may, the possibility of a complete change taking 

 place in the plumage of one species, an important fact not 

 hitherto observed by any ornithologist, being perfectly establish- 

 ed, ought we to conclude that it is equally possible in other spe- 

 cies, whether of the genus phasianus, or of any other ? In my 

 opinion, it would be using a very unnecessary reserve, not to 

 admit this possibility with regard to the species of the same 

 genus, in which the change in question has been seen to be pro- 



