24 A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 



Facial skin scarlet, with a scattering of minute black featherlets. Bill yellowish or 

 greenish horn, darker basally. Irides hazel. Legs and feet brownish, sometimes very 

 pale. Claws black. Weight, i lb. 6 ozs. to 2 lbs. Length, 500 to 730, averaging 

 600 mm. ; extent, 620 to 680; wing, 225 ; tail, 210; tarsus, 67; middle toe and claw, 

 ^^•, bill from nostril, 17 mm. The spurs in the female are sharp, slightly elevated 

 scalules. 



Chick in Down. — The crown is '' chocolate brown, with the sides of the head and 

 crown rufous, pale on former, rich and somewhat chestnut on the latter ; ear coverts 

 dark brown ; upper plumage brown, minutely freckled with black, each feather with paler 

 edging, a conspicuous white spot at the tip, and a broad sub-terminal bar of black edged 

 with rufous ; wing-coverts like the back. Lower plumage dull pale brown, the feathers 

 with whitish shafts and pale edges." 



Juvenile Plumage. — The juvenile plumage is of a very indefinite buffy brown, 

 indistinctly mottled with blackish, darker, more greyish above, paler brown below. 

 Most of the mantle feathers and all of the wing-coverts have a broad terminal band of 

 pale brownish white, and a still wider sub-terminal cross bar of black, one of the most 

 characteristic juvenile marks of this genus. The sexes are distinctly marked in the 

 juvenile plumage, the males being much darker and the females more of a rufous, reddish 

 brown. 



First Year Male Plumage. — As in all the members of this genus, the young bird 

 moults directly from the juvenile garb into the adult plumage. There is, however, much 

 variation in these first year s feathers, owing to the advanced or retarded condition of 

 pigment formation in the blood of each individual. I have known of instances where 

 the moult resulted in fully adult patterns and coloration, where the crest was almost as 

 white as it is ever found, and where the wings appeared metallic and unmarked. In two 

 of these cases the birds were in captivity, well nourished by an abundance of food, but 

 the moult retarded by unseasonable cold weather. The changes in the blood were 

 therefore apparently completed, and the transition from immature to fully mature was 

 clean and abrupt. 



On the other hand, in both wild and captive individuals we often find a partial 

 assumption of adult patterns at this moult, although this is apparent only in more or 

 less inconspicuous characters — which, however, are full of significance and interest. 



The most noticeable of such characters are the absence, or extremely poor develop- 

 ment, of metallic gloss on the plumage, and the presence of whitish vermiculation on the 

 wing-coverts, secondaries, upper tail-coverts and tail-feathers. The mantle shows the 

 absence of gloss more commonly than other parts of the plumage. The entire exposed 

 outer webs of the greater coverts and secondaries are sometimes thickly vermiculated 

 with pale brown during the first year of the bird's life, and the same is true of the three 

 or four middle pairs of tail-feathers, except that in this case the vermiculations are 

 greyish white and much coarser. As I have said, this character occasionally persists 

 even in very old individuals. 



The young female in first-year plumage closely resembles the adult. The most 



