86 Aviary Pheasants. 



fashion. They are most lovely birds, with their 

 well -shaped, snake-like heads of silver, grey, and 

 black, rich copper backs, and white bars or braces 

 crossed. It is a most absurd sight to see an Elliot 

 cock making love ; he dances and jumps round and 

 round the hen, then takes a scamper, and again jumps 

 and bounds high in the air round her, his wattles 

 erected to a perfect point, as in the case of the 

 Swinhoe. In many of his actions he is very like 

 that bird. 



Now we come to a pen of one cock and three hen 

 Versicolors. Here Beauty, the cock, no sooner sees 

 me than he erects his ears like horns, and, making 

 his rich red wattles, studded with minute feathers, 

 to meet, and extending them deeply also below his 

 throat, he walks up and down before me, displaying 

 all his bright colours, elevating first one side of his 

 body and then the other, so as to display all his 

 beauty, as he would to a hen when courting her ; 

 but the instant I 'attempt to enter, he puts himself in 

 a fighting attitude, dashes at me, and would rip my 

 trousers, or, if I stooped, strike me in the face, so 

 high does he spring; and when I retreat, he crows 

 again and again in token of victory, and flies re- 

 peatedly against the wire netting to try to get at me. 

 The next aviary has a similar number, but the cock is 

 altogether as quiet and well-behaved as the last was 

 pugnacious. In the next is Dandy, my old bird, and 

 the father of Beauty ; he is so proud that he walks 

 on tiptoe, erecting himself till his head is quite per- 



