OBSERVATIONS ON BIRDS 337 



ance of a cock pheasant ; but then the head, and neck, and 

 breast, and belly were of a glossy black : and though it 

 weighed three pounds three ounces and a half, 2 the weight 

 of a full-grown cock pheasant, yet there were no signs of 

 any spurs on the legs, as is usual with all grown cock pheas- 

 ants who have long ones. The legs and feet were naked 

 of feathers, and therefore it could be nothing of the grouse 

 kind. In the tail were no bending feathers, such as cock 

 pheasants usually have and are characteristic of the sex. 

 The tail was much shorter than the tail of a hen pheasant, 

 and blunt and square at the end. The back, wing, feathers, 

 and tail were all of a pale russet curiously streaked some- 

 what like the upper parts of a 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 peahens 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 " peahens, after they have done 

 laying, sometimes assume the plumage of the male bird," 

 and has given a figure of the male-feathered peahen now to 

 be seen in the Leverian Museum ; and M. Salerne remarks, 

 that "the hen pheasant, when she has done laying and sit- 

 ting, 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. 



LANDRAIL A man brought me a landrail, or daker-hen, 

 a bird so rare in this district that we seldom see more than 

 one or two in a season, and those only in autumn. 3 This is 

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