on Kaleege and other Pheasants.



297



to P6re David, in his ‘ Oiseaux de la Chine.’ Yet these species can

be crossed in captivity, and the hybrid, as is well known, is perfectly

fertile, showing a close blood-relationship. Now if we compare the

males of these two Pheasants, we find that they could be easily

distinguished by structural characters, even if they were all white.

In the Gold Pheasant the crest is full, and covers the whole crown ;

the ruff is square-tipped, and all the under-plumage disunited and

glassy-looking; in the Amherst the crest is scanty and confined

to the back of the crown, the ruff is round-tipped, and the under¬

plumage is close-textured and on the breast scale-like and velvety,

while the ruff and tail are much larger than in the golden bird.

Moreover, the Amherst has in both sexes a conspicuous bare area

round the eye. Thus, although forming a natural generic group,

the two species have good structural differences. As to the meaning

of genera, I should like to quote here what I said in “ The Indian

Pheasants and their Allies,” published in the ‘ Indian Forester,’

vol. xxviii, 1902, p. 228 (it is not in these articles as republished

in book-form, with additions, as ‘ The Game-Birds of India and

Asia ’):


“ It is often stated, even by high zoological authorities, that

genera have no real existence in nature, but are only the invention

of naturalists for cutting up the numerous species into manageable

groups, the species themselves being presumed to be real enough.

This notion is entirely fallacious. A genus is, or should be, a group

of species, each of which more closely resembles all the other species

of that group than it does any other species outside. This being so,

a genus is just as real a thing as the species of which it is composed,

and this is obvious enough in the rare cases when the separate

species of the whole genus each have a popular name. For instance,

ic would be absurd to admit the existence of the Carrion Crow, our

old friend the Indian House-Crow, the Raven, Rook, and Jackdaw,

and then say that the genus ‘ Crow,’ or Corvus, in scientific language,

which includes all these, did not exist except in the imagination of

naturalists. A ‘ Crow ’ is a big (more or less) black bird of certain

physical attributes, and most people recognise the existence of the

genus before they know the species.”



