OBSER VA TIONS ON BIRDS. 3 1 3 



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.B. 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. MARK WICK. 



