PEACOCK 159 



which are speckled black and cream in the ordinary form, black 

 glossed at the edges with blue and green, and the thighs black 

 instead of the usual drab. The corresponding hen is white with 

 black tail, a considerable but variable amount of black streaking 

 and peppering above, cinnamon crown and pinion-quills, and 

 white instead of dark legs, as indeed the black-winged cock has. 

 In the down, birds of this variety are primrose-yellow, developing 

 buffy wing-feathers, and ultimately a chicken-feather of cream 

 colour barred above with black, from which the cocks by degrees 

 become darker and the hens lighter, as described above. I have 

 gone into so much detail about this bird because it is positively 

 known to arise as a " sport " from ordinary domestic peafowl, 

 and to produce ordinary birds when crossed with the white variety 

 so often imported to India from Europe as a curiosity. There is, 

 therefore, no doubt that it is not distinct from the ordinary pea- 

 fowl ; but at the same time it is a most interesting form, as it 

 is distinct in all stages and rarely fails to reproduce its kind, so 

 that any information about its occurrence in the wild state would 

 be very interesting. The "uniformly dirty-yellow" hens seen 

 wild by Sanderson were presumably a buff form, or they might 

 have been young hens of this type, but as he says nothing about 

 markings the former is more likely, and as I have heard of a cock 

 of the domestic race which was described to me as exactly of the 

 colour of a new copper coin, it is evident that a buff variation 

 is possible for both sexes. Pied birds also are well known in 

 domestication, but with the exception of the production of these 

 colour varieties the peacock has not altered at all since its first 

 introduction into Europe folio wmg on Alexander the Great's 

 invasion of India, so that twenty centuries of domestication in 

 an alien climate have not affected its plumage any more than 

 they have eliminated the less elaborate but even more con- 

 spicuous black-and-red hues of its companion, the jungle-fowl. 



Like that bird, the peacock is essentially a lowlander, not 

 ascending the hills into a temperate chmate, though in the hills 

 of the south of India it goes higher than in the Himalayas. It 

 likes tree cover near water and cultivation, and where such 

 conditions occur may be found almost anywhere in India 

 and Ceylon ; but, as Hume says, there may be too much water, 



