196 A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 



colour forms which has produced such otherwise inexplicable variation and asymmetry of 

 colour and pattern. I therefore sink the name harmani in the synonym of auritum as 

 a probable wild hybrid between that species and tibetanum. In view of the observations 

 which follow there is no reason to credit the mutilated type specimen of harmani with 

 having originally had more than twenty-two, or even twenty, rectrices. 



Crossoptilon leucurum 



This name is based on individuals collected within the range of tibetanum in eastern 

 Tibet, which resemble tibetanum in body plumage and auritum in the presence of white 

 in the tail. Other distinctions, as I shall show, are based on erroneous examination of 

 the characters. 



I have carefully studied the male and female types in the British Museum. Mr. 

 Grant, in his "Handbook of Game-birds," states by direct inference that this species has 

 twenty tail-feathers, but this is an error. The female type has twenty-one rectrices 

 remaining, having lost the outer left, making twenty-two in all. The male type has 

 twenty rectrices left in the skin, but a glance at the roots of the tail feathers beneath the 

 lower coverts shows the deep holes and the gap in the ranks marking the loss of another 

 pair. 



The female type is strongly suffused with blue-grey except on the belly. The white 

 spotting of the tail is carried to an extreme. On the outer feathers it is confined to one 

 web, although, as usual in these hybrids, varying greatly on the two sides of the tail ; 

 the third pair having the right feather with both webs whitened, and the left feather 

 with only the outer web so marked, etc. This white increases as we approach the 

 central feathers, until on the next to the inner pair the purple gloss is restricted to a very 

 narrow margin and the terminal fifth of the feather. In the central (supernumerary) pair 

 the white is again restricted to an elongated patch on the outer web, the inner web being 

 grey. Even this pair is asymmetrically patterned, the grey invading the white outer web 

 along the shaft in the left feather, while the right has a small patch of white near the 

 anterior portion of the grey. The very dark secondaries also show white patches on 

 the outer web, a character occasionally found in more typically coloured tibetanum 

 individuals. 



The male type has the greatest amount of white of any specimen I have examined, 

 the purple on all the rectrices which remain being confined to the extremity. 



A second ;^male in the British Museum possesses only twenty rectrices, and the 

 closest examination shows no signs of any having been lost. In this bird another colour 

 combination is found ; the greatest amount of white being present on the outer rectrices, 

 and gradually diminishing inwardly until the central feathers are much like those of a 

 typical tibetanum individual. 



In the Rothschild Museum at Tring an adult male ''leucurum'' is intensely white 

 over all the body, except for the brown shafts of the flight-feathers, and the more or less 

 mottling of dark on the basal half of their inner webs. The outer three pairs of 

 rectrices show a great deal of white on their outer web, the inner being grey. The next 

 two pairs are pearl-grey, and on the succeeding inner feathers the light colour is more or 

 less confined to the web near the shaft. There is no distinct margin to the light colour. 



