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 victorice 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 cenehris. Scytale eoronahim. 



Xenodon typhlus. Philodryas reinhardtii. 



Xenodon rhahdocephalus. 



The following papers were read : — 



1. On THE Assumption of the Male Plumage by the Fe- 

 male OF THE Common Pheasant. By Edward Hamilton, 

 M.D., F.Z.S., F.L.S., ETC. 



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 — ^. 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 



