300 Heredity. 



P. cristatus and muticus, nevertheless they are in some 

 respects intermediate in character between these two 

 species; and this fact favors, as Mr. Sclater believes, the 

 view that they form a distinct and natural species. 



On the other hand, Sir H. Heron states that this breed 

 suddenly appeared within his memory in Lord Brown- 

 low's large stock of pied, white, and common peacocks. 

 The same thing occurred in Sir J. Trevelyan's flock com- 

 posed of common and pied peacocks. It is remarkable 

 that in these two -latter instances the black-shouldered 

 kind increased to the extinction of the previously exist- 

 ing breed. I have also received, through Mr. Sclater, 

 a statement from Mr. Hudson Gurney that he reared, 

 many years ago, a pair of black-shouldered peacocks from 

 the common kind, and another orinthologist, Prof. A. 

 Newton, states that, five or six years ago, a female bird, 

 in all respects similar to the female of the black-shoul- 

 dered kind, was produced from a stock of common pea- 

 cocks in his possession, which, during more than twenty 

 years, had not been crossed with birds of any other 

 strain. Here we have five distinct cases of japanned 

 birds suddenly appearing in flocks of the common kind 

 kept in England. Better evidence of the first appear- 

 ance of a new variety could hardly be desired. If we 

 reject this evidence, and believe that the japannned pea- 

 cock is a distinct species, we must suppose in all these 

 cases that the common breed had at some former period 

 been crossed with the supposed P. nigripennis, but had 

 lost every trace of the cross, yet that the birds occasion- 

 ally produced offspring which suddenly and completely 

 reacquired, through reversion, the characters of P. ni- 

 gripennis. I have heard of no other such case in the 

 animal or vegetable kingdom. ... So remarkable a 

 form as P. niyripennis, when first imported, would have 



