4 A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 



the 5th or 6th is slightly the longest. The tarsus is much longer than the middle 

 toe and claw, and is armed in the male with a pair of stout, curved and moderately 

 long spurs. The feet and legs are strong, and vary greatly as to colour, being 

 scarlet, greenish, whitish or brown. 



A generalized brownish olive is the dominant colour of the females, more or less 

 variegated with buffy yellow, white and black. The secondary sexual characters of 

 the males, with the exception of the spurs, consist only of increased size and more 

 specialized colour and pattern. This latter shows great variation, what may be 

 taken as the most generalized being an equal black and white vermiculation, produc- 

 ing a grey effect. On the one hand, we find a disappearance of the white, giving us 

 a series of black, or metallic glossed birds, with solid patches of white, and greyish 

 under-parts ; and again a dominance of the white, the black lines being greatly 

 reduced. Finally the metallic hue may be varied so that the bird is brilliant in blue, 

 green and dull crimson. In the metallic group the feathers of the rump tend to be 

 truncated, with a disintegrated fringe, which may be of a special colour or even 

 structurally specialized. This hints strongly of the still more modified rump in 

 Lophura and Acomus. 



GENNAEUS 



Type 



Gennaeus Wagler, Isis, 1832, p. 1228 G. nyctkemerus 



Njcthemerus Swainson, Class. Birds, II. 1837, p. 371 » „ 



Alectrophash Gray, List Genera Birds, ed. 2, 184 1, p. 78 G. cuvieri 



Grammatoptilus Reichenback, Nat. Syst. Vogel, 1852, p. 30 . . . , G. lineatus 

 Hierophasis Elliot, Mon. Phas. 1872, p. 2, text to pi. XXV G. swinhoii 



For many reasons the genus Gennaeus is the most interesting in the family Phasi- 

 anidae, and especially because of the puzzling nature of many of the forms. In the field, 

 my experience with these birds extended from the haunts of albocristatus in Kashmir 

 to nycthemerus in Fokien, and from horsfieldi in Upper Burma to lineatus in Lower 

 Burma. I collected, or made notes upon, many of the forms, not only of adults in 

 full plumage, but of moulting birds and those in immature dress. Forearmed with 

 the details of what had already been published on the subject, I was able to search 

 more intelligently and with more direct design than would otherwise have been the 

 case. More than this, however, was the aid given by the English sportsmen in 

 Burma, who in some cases furnished me with data and specimens which were of 

 the greatest help. In one or two instances these were the very men who had 

 collected the original types, so their assistance cannot be over-estimated. It seems 

 quite certain that any future investigation of this group will but slightly affect the 

 general results I have reached. I feel all the more certain in stating this belief 

 because I find myself in almost perfect agreement with the general conclusions of 

 Prof. Alessandro Ghigi, at least as regards the method of evolution of these birds. 

 It is most significant that while the conclusions of this Italian ornithologist were 

 reached by a study of the phenomena of experimental hybridism, and those of mine 

 by independent observation of wild shot individuals, our results differ only in very 

 minor details. His paper to which I refer is Ricerche di Sisteniatica Sperimentale 

 sul genere Gennaeus Wagler > 



1 Memoria R. Accademia Scienze dell' Institute di Bologna (Bologna, 1909). 



