326 OBSERVATIONS ON 



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, and 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 grouse 

 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 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. 2 



tered, and ran tumbling along just before the dog's nose till she had 

 drawn him to a considerable distance, when she took wing and flew still 

 farther off, but not out of the field : on this the dog returned to me, near 

 which place the young ones lay concealed in the grass, which the old 

 bird no sooner perceived than she flew back again to us, settled just 

 before the dog's nose again, and by rolling and tumbling about drew off 

 his attention from her young, and thus preserved her brood a second 

 time. I have also seen, when a kite has been hovering over a covey of 

 young partridges, the old birds fly up at the bird of prey, screaming and 

 fighting with all their might to preserve their brood. MARK WICK. 



1 Hen pheasants usually weigh only two pounds ten ounces. G. W. 



2 The picture was subsequently presented to Gilbert White by Lord 

 Stawell. See Jesse's " Gleanings," second series, p. 159. ED. 



