TWO PHEASANT CROSSES 
Reciprocal Matings Give Widely Different Results in Female and Identical Results 
in Male Offspring—Females Practically Sexless—Possi- 
bility of Sex-Linkage as Explanation 
Joun C. Puitiips, Wenham, Mass. 
N THE American Naturalist for 
1913 (p. 701), the writer described 
a reciprocal first cross between 
Reeves’ pheasant and the common 
ring-neck pheasant (P. torquatus). It 
was shown that the males differed very 
perceptibly in the two crosses, but of 
the females nothing could be learned 
because only one female was reared 
from the cross of male ring-neck female 
Reeves, and none at all in the other 
cross. 
In order to find out whether these 
sterile reciprocal hybrids always differed 
in the male sex, and also whether the 
females would show any differences, 
another cross was carried out in 1914 
as a check upon the first experiment. 
But in the second experiment the Prince 
of Wales pheasant (P. principalis) was 
used instead of the P. torquatus. 
The P. principalis, a distinct species 
of true pheasant, belongs to the dark- 
necked, red-rumped group, and has 
been used in another cross by me. (See 
Jour: Exp. Zool., Vol. 18, p: 93.) -The 
striking features of the male are briefly 
as follows: neck-ring absent, lesser 
and median wing coverts white, with 
white shaft stripes on greater coverts; 
rump and upper tail coverts orange red, 
with a few fine black dots; tail barring 
reduced to faint lines. On the other 
hand, P. torquatus differs markedly in 
these four points, as follows: white 
neck-ring well marked; rump greenish 
to greenish slate, with subterminal bars 
of brilliant green; lesser and median 
wing coverts mostly sandy-buff color; 
tail barring very marked, especially 
towards the tip, where black areas 6 to 
12 millimeters wide occur. There are 
other differences which need not be 
mentioned here. The female of P. prin- 
ctpalis is much lighter colored than the 
12 
torquatus female, but otherwise very 
similar, and the two species produce 
fertile hybrids. 
REEVES PHEASANT 
The Reeves pheasant, Syrmaticus 
reevest, a familiar aviary species, is a 
wholly different looking bird, and be- 
longs to a monotypic genus. The male 
is entirely unlike any of the true pheas- 
ants (Phasianus) in coloring, and has a 
tail 3 or 4 feet long. The upper surface 
of the body is bright golden color, with 
black edgings to the feathers of the 
mantle, back and rump, while the breast 
and flanks are barred with white, black, 
and chestnut. The head is strikingly 
marked with black and white. The 
female Reeves pheasant is also unlike 
any true pheasant, and shows some of 
the male characters in her face pattern 
and the colors of her mantle, breast, 
and flanks. 
In this cross, therefore, we have to do 
with two species, not only different in 
the male sex but wholly unlike in both 
sexes and in all plumages, and always 
producing absolutely sterile hybrids. 
Tn 1914, a Reeves cock was mated 
with two Prince of Wales females (Pen 
J 1914), and a Prince of Wales cock was 
placed with a couple of Reeves females 
(Pen K 1914). It may be remarked 
that both these parent stocks were 
inbred and came from the same grand- 
parents. Large numbers of P. princi- 
palis have been reared here and no 
variations noticed. 
From Pen J nine birds were reared 
to maturity, four males and five females, 
and from Pen kK, one male and three 
females. A wandering cat somewhat 
curtailed the experiment. 
Comparing the two pens of males and 
the two pens of females, we get the fol- 
