370 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 



the appearance of a young male in change of plumage, 

 proved on dissection to be a female; yet this bird 

 exhibited no "signs of disease or exhaustion of the 

 ovarium."* May not this, and similarly exceptional 

 cases, be accounted for by the supposition that such 

 '^ mules" have not had time to moult their abnormal 

 plumage, since their organs of generation have acquired 

 a healthy condition. That this view is not an improbable 

 one is shovsrn, I think, by the following interesting fact 

 (recorded by Mr. Gurney in the same note), with refer- 

 ence to a " mule" pheasant taken alive in his preserves 

 in 1852 : — " The bird was placed in a large cage in my 

 garden, and in the course of last autumn (1853) quite 

 lost the male plumage it had previously attained, and 

 resumed its ordinary female dress." A bird of this 

 kind, which was brought to one of our bird-stuffers in 

 December, 1864, to be preserved for Lord Rendlesham, 

 besides the usual dark head and neck of its borrowed 

 plumes, showed a most unmistakeable white ring, 

 plainly denoting its own descent from the ring-necked 

 as well as from the common type. 



Few subjects, of a like nature, have excited warmer 

 discussions, or tended to the exhibition of more violent 

 prejudices than the "battue," and, as usual in such 

 controversies, supporters and opponents, in their bitter 

 hostility, have been so given to exaggeration and the 

 use of hard words, that the true merits of the case must 

 be looked for apart from the arguments of either faction. 

 Undoubtedly, as far as pheasantf shooting is concerned, 



* Mr. Thomas Dix informs me that he recently examined a 

 female of the common redstart, in the possession of Mr. Doubleday, 

 of Epping, which had a mottled black throat like young males in 

 autumn, and, in this case also, the ovaries were quite pei'fect and 

 full of eggs. 



t I have no intention by these remarks to uphold the excessive 

 rearing of running game, an only too just cause of complaint, in 

 many instances, on the part of our tenant-farmers. 



