1862.] DR. E. HAMILTON ON THE PLUMAGE OF THE PHEASANT. 23 
February 11, 1862. 
Dr. J. E. Gray, V.P., in the Chair. 
Mr. Gould exhibited a specimen of a Lyre-bird (Menura) from 
Port Philip, and pointed out the characters in which it differed from 
the closely allied Menura superba of New South Wales. Mr. Gould 
proposed the name Menura victorie for this new species. 
The Secretary called the attention of the Society to the fine series 
of Snakes recently received from their Corresponding Member, Dr. 
Wucherer, of Bahia. It embraced specimens of the following spe- 
cies, as determined by Dr. Giinther :— 
Epicrates cenchris. Seytale coronatum. 
Xenodon typhlus. Philodryas reinhardtii. 
Xenodon rhabdocephalus. 
The following papers were read :— 
1. ON THE AssUMPTION oF THE Mate PLUMAGE BY THE FE- 
MALE OF THE COMMON PHEASANT. By Epwarp Hamitron, 
M.D., F.Z.S., F.L.S., erc. 
The late Mr. Yarrell, in a communication read before the Royal 
Society in 1827, ‘On the Assumption of the Male Plumage in Female 
Pheasants,” drew attention to the fact that this anomaly was not ne- 
cessarily the accompaniment of age—z.e., in old hen-birds which 
had done laying; but states that it may occur sometimes from an 
original internal defect, sometimes from subsequent disease, and 
sometimes from old age. Dr. Butter, who had written previously 
on this subject, had stated that this peculiarity only occurred in old 
birds; and John Hunter, in “An Account of an Extraordinary 
Pheasant,’’ had the same opinion. He considers that in such cases 
the female puts on the secondary properties of the male, and observes 
that some classes are more liable than others to this change. He 
goes on to state “that in animals just born, or very young, there 
are no peculiarities to distinguish one sex from the other, exclusive 
of what relates to the organs of generation, which can only be in 
those who have external parts; and that towards the age of maturity 
the discriminating changes before mentioned begin to appear, the 
male then losing that resemblance he had to the female in various 
secondary properties: this particularly applies to birds. It is evi- 
dently the male which at this time recedes from the female, every 
female being at the age of maturity more like the young of the 
same species than the male is observed to be; and if the male is de- 
prived of the testes when growing, he retains more of the original 
youthful form, and therefore more resembles the female. From 
hence it might be supposed that the female character contains more 
truly the specific properties of the animal than the male; but the 
