404 The Natural History of Selborne 



legs, as is usual with all grown cock pheasants, 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, 

 somewhat 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 

 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.33. It ought to be mentioned, that some good judges have 

 imagined this bird to have been a stray grouse or blackcock ; 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 has just begun to 

 assume the plumage of the cock. MARKWICK. 



LAND-RAIL. 



A MAN brought me a land-rail 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. This is deemed a bird of passage by all 



