344 OBSERVATIONS 



hen partridge. I returned it with my verdict, that it 

 was probably a spurious, or hybrid hen-bird, bred 

 between a cock pheasant and some domestic fowl. 

 When I came to talk with the keeper who brought it, 

 he told me that some pea-hens had been known last 

 summer to haunt the coppices and coverts where this 

 mule was found. 



Mr. Elmer, of Farnham, the famous game painter, 

 was employed to take an exact copy of this curious 

 bird. 



N. B. It ought to be mentioned, that some good 

 judges have imagined this bird to have been a stray 

 grouse or black-cock ; it is, however, to be observed, 

 that Mr. W. remarks, that its legs and feet were 

 naked, whereas those of the grouse are feathered to 

 the toes. WHITE. 



Mr. Latham observes, that " pea-hens, after they 

 have done laying, sometimes assume the plumage of 

 the male bird," and has given a figure of the male- 

 feathered pea-hen now to be seen in the Leverian 

 Museum ; and M. Salerne remarks, that " the hen 

 pheasant, when she has done laying and sitting, will 

 get the plumage of the male." May not this hybrid 

 pheasant, as Mr. White calls it, be a bird of this 

 kind ? that is, an old hen pheasant which had just 

 begun to assume the plumage of the cock *. 



MARKWICK. 



* See the account by John Hunter, in the Philosophical 

 Transact. Art. xxx. 1760. "The subject of the account is a 

 hen pheasant with the feathers of the cock. The author con- 

 cludes, that it is most probable that all those hen pheasants 

 which are found wild, and have the feathers of the cock, were 

 formerly perfect hens, but that now they are changed with age, 

 and perhaps by certain constitutional circumstances." It appears 

 also, that the hen taking the plumage of the cock, is not con- 

 fined to the pheasant alone ; it takes place also with the pea- 



