324 OBSERVATIONS ON 



A HYBRID PHEASANT. 



Lord Stawell sent me from the great lodge in the Holt a curious 

 bird for my inspection. It was found by the spaniels of one of his 

 keepers in a coppice, and shot on the wing. The shape, air, and 

 habit of the bird, and the scarlet ring round the eyes, agreed well 

 with the appearance of a cock-pheasant : but then the head and 

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

 weighed three pounds three ounces and a half, 1 the weight of a 

 large 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 grous kind. In the tail were 

 no long 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 arid 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. B. It ought to be mentioned, that some good judges have 

 imagined this bird to have been a stray grous or black-cock ; it 

 is however to be observed, that Mr. W. remarks, that its legs 

 and feet were naked, whereas those of the grous are feathered 

 to the toes. 2 



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 



1 Hen pheasants usually weigh only two pounds ten ounces. 



2 [There can now be no doubt that this bird was a hybrid between the black-cock 

 and the pheasant. The coloured engraving in some of the early editions gives 

 a very erroneous idea of the bird, and is a wretched copy from Elmer's clever 

 painting, mentioned by Gilbert White, which was given to him by Lord Stawell, 

 and has been for many years in my possession. 



