440 OBSERVATIONS ON 



and seems to depend more on the swiftness of its feet 

 than on its flying. 



comparatively but thinly clothed : this is the only point of importance in 

 which the supposed hybrid differs from the black cock in its present state 

 of plumage. At an earlier period the feathering on the tarsi is still less, 

 as I have ascertained by the examination of a specimen killed in Selkirk- 

 shire in October, which is almost destitute of any covering: and I am in- 

 formed by the friend who shot this bird that the younger the black cock 

 is the less are the legs feathered, and that he has killed pouts without 

 any feathering whatever. At that earlier period of the moult, before the 

 tail-feathers had been changed, it is consequently to be concluded that 

 the tarsi would have been nearly or wholly naked. The shape of the 

 beak is that of the grouse : and the situation of the spot over the eye is 

 decidedly grouse-like, the pheasant's spot being situated at the back of 

 and below the eye. These, with the black colour of so large a portion of 

 the plumage, and the absence of those lengthened feathers which I have 

 hitherto invariably observed in pheasant hybrids, are in my estimation, 

 decisive marks of the identity of the hybrid of White with the young 

 black cock. 



" I am bound to admit that the weight mentioned by White differs from 

 that of my bird by a pound : but in his weight some error may be sus- 

 pected. I have never yet met with a cock pheasant that weighed so 

 much as he states. The weight would argue also, although not to the 

 same extent, against the bird being a hybrid between the pheasant and 

 the black cock ; for the produce of a heavier and a lighter bird ought not 

 to weigh so much as the heaviest sex of the heavier parent, even if itself 

 of the heavier sex, which White did not believe his bird to be." 



From this description it will be seen how very nearly the black game, 

 in a certain condition, approaches to White's bird : an approach so near 

 as to induce the describer to regard them as identical. Mr. Herbert was, 

 however, at the time when he saw the bird at Petworth, thoroughly ac- 

 quainted with the black cock in all its states, and could not have been 

 mistaken when he declared that the bird which he saw there was cer- 

 tainly not a moulting bird of the year. 



The third theory with respect to Gilbert White's bird has had fewer 

 supporters than either of the others. It was advanced by Markwick, and 

 has rather the air of a guess than of an opinion; and as his question was 

 evidently to be answered in the negative as to the species to which he 

 referred, it has scarcely received any consideration whatever. Adverting 

 to the fact, known in his time in consequence of the inquiries of Hunter 

 (inquiries which have since been carried further by the industry of 

 Mr. Yarrell), that hen birds, when incapacitated by age or other causes 

 from producing young, lose the characters of their sex and assume the 

 plumage of the male, wearing even the spurs and other masculine in- 

 signia ; Markwick asks whether White's hybrid may not be an old hen 

 pheasant that had begun to assume the plumage of the cock? There is 

 so little in common with the cock pheasant in the deviations from the 

 ordinary pheasant colouring described by White, that this question must 



