1914] Beebe: Preliminary Pheasant Studies. 267 



ITHAGINIS CRUENTUS. 



Natal Down. — Chick about a week old; general color scheme 

 — head and neck gray and white, body rufous. 



Loral and malar streak, circle around eye, large infra- 

 auricular spot and line extending backward around the nape, 

 center of crown and wide nuchal band, brownish-black. Re- 

 mainder of head, throat and neck pale grizzled gray. Begin- 

 ning abruptly at the lower neck all around, and backward over 

 entire body, the down is dull rufous with slender black tips, 

 except on the under parts, where the rufous is paler and purer. 

 A central dorsal and two lateral stripes are paler, more buffy. 



Seven primaries, eight secondaries and several greater 

 wing-coverts even at this early age are well in evidence, the for- 

 mer having pushed out about 15 mm. beyond their sheaths, the 

 wing measuring 46 mm. The down clinging to the tips of the 

 growing flight-feathers is rarely in a single distal cluster, but 

 more commonly with the separated down filaments supported 

 on the extremities of several distal barbs. The sprouting wing 

 feathers are of unusual breadth, dark brown, mottled irregu- 

 larly with buff, and tipped with pale buff. Bill from nostril 6; 

 tarsus 23 mm. 



Juvenile Plumage. — Bird about five weeks old. The dorsal 

 plumage is uniformly of a dull mottled buff and black, each 

 feather with a very conspicuous, terminal, triangular spot of 

 pale buff. The ventral pattern is a wide, buffy-white shaft-stripe 

 bordered irregularly with darker brown, with the margin of 

 the feather pale buff. 



As the head and neck are the last to lose the nestling down, 

 so their first contour covering is correspondingly more advanced 

 in color and pattern than the mesoptile body feathers, and hints 

 strongly of the adult plumage. The facial area is but scantily 

 covered with featherlets, the anterior crown is buffy, while the 

 nape and neck show traces of the blue color and white shafts 

 of the adult. The latter is the first certain evidence of the male 

 sex. 



The full-grown juvenile tail-feathers are fourteen in num- 

 ber, and measure but 84 mm. in length as compared with 170 in 

 the adult. In shape they are slender, rather pointed and falcate, 



