PRELIMINARY PHEASANT STUDIES 



By C. WILLIAM BEEBE, 



Curator of Birds 



Three months of the summer of 1912 were spent by the 

 writer in the museums of London, Tring, Paris, Berlin and 

 other cities, studying the pheasant collections of these institu- 

 tions. The ultimate use of the data is for inclusion in a Mono- 

 graph which is under preparation, but a number of the more 

 general results seem worthy of immediate publication. 



GENERAL CLASSIFICATION. 



Not until my studies of the Pheasants are completed do I 

 feel it desirable to discuss the relationship of these birds to 

 one another in detail. Realizing how artificial and arbitrary 

 have been the previous attempts to find some character which 

 would be of use in separating the major divisions of the family, 

 I made elaborate tabulation of several scores of what seemed 

 characters of significance. These were set down at random as 

 I passed from genus to genus in the course of my researches, 

 and not until the final summing up did I kno\y whether any 

 would prove of taxonomic worth. 



A number of them, like the character of the relative length 

 of individual primaries, gave encouragement at first only to be 

 discounted by some wholly unexpected exception. Finally one 

 character alone remained and after careful application to every 

 genus it has been found to present no illogical exceptions, and 

 in its unusual nature to be most suggestive. Before going on 

 to discuss this in greater detail I wish to re-emphasize the 

 method pursued in elucidating this and other taxonomic char- 

 acters. This was not to lay out specimens of a priori supposedly 

 related groups and then examine them for resemblances; but, 

 as I have said, by a blind tabulation of very many characters 



