OBSER VA TIONS ON BIRDS. 38$ 



neck, and breast, and belly were of a glossy black ; and though it 

 weighed three pounds three ounces and a half,* 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 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.D. It ought to be mentioned, that some good judges have 

 imagined this bird to have been a stray grouse or blackcock jf it is 



* Hen pheasants usually weigh only two pounds ten ounces. 



t There have been several opinions stated as to whether this bird was a hybrid, or only 

 a young blackcock before it had attained its full plumage. The point at issue is of very 

 little importance, as we know now certainly that a mule occasionally takes place between 

 the black grouse and pheasant, and if the red patch represented in the figure to surround 

 the eye has been correctly drawn, the probability is that it was a hybrid. 



The specimen was stuffed and formed part of the museum of the Earl of Egremont at 

 Petworth. This collection was afterwards entirely destroyed by moths or carelessness, and 

 with it the bird in question, so that there is now no means of solving the question by a 

 fresh examination. But Mr. Herbert writes, "I saw this curious bird stuffed in the year 

 1804, and I have not the slightest hesitation in pronouncing that it was a mule between the 

 blackcock and the common pheasant. I was inf jrmed at the time by Lord Egremont that 

 it was Mr. White's bird, and I examined it with the most minute attention, compared it 

 with the description in the ' Naturalists' Calendar,' and wrote at the moment marginal 

 memoranda on my copy of that book. In Mr White's description of that bird, where he 



says, ' that the back, wing feathers, and tail were somewhat like the upper parts of a hen 

 partridge,' I scratched out at the time, the words 'somewhat like,' and wrote in the margin 

 'much browner than,' and with that alteration I believe Mr. White's description to be 



quite correct : but I noted down that the plate was exceedingly ill-coloured, which indeed 

 may be perceived by comparing it with the description. I did not then, nor do I now, 

 entertain the slightest doubt of its being a mule between the black game and the 

 pheasant." 



" As I understood that it has been surmised that the hybrid described by White might 

 have been a young blackcock in moult, I wish to state in the most positive manner, that I 

 am certain it was not. I had at the period when I examined it, been in the annual habit 

 of shooting young black game, and was perfectly well acquainted with all their variations 

 of plumage ; and had also been accustomed to see them reared in confinement. It is a 

 point on which I could not be deceived. The bird had neither the legs and feet, nor the 

 plumage of a blackcock in any state of its growth." 



The above, copied from Mr. Bennet's notes, is the most direct proof we can now have on 

 the subject, and we see nothing in the figure (of which a reduced woodcut is given), 

 to warrant any doubt being held, after the distinct and very decided evidence given by 

 Mr. Herbert. 



O 



