BLACK-BREASTED KALEEGE 51 



the secondaries and tail-feathers black, glossed with blue only along the visible margins. 

 The bill is usually greenish horn colour, paler toward the tip and darker basally ; facial 

 skin scarlet ; irides brownish hazel ; legs and feet variable, sometimes leaden blue, again 

 light horn colour, brown or fleshy. Length about 580 mm. ; bill from nostril 18; wing 

 221 ; tail 230 ; tarsus 75 ; middle toe and claw 60 ; spurs about 22 mm. The tail is the 

 most variable of all these measurements, averaging longer in eastern birds. Weight 

 from 2i to 3| lbs. 



Adult Female. — As the females of albocristatus are paler of hue, and those of 

 7nelanonotMS more melanistic, so the females of horsfieldi tend toward erythryism, being 

 on the whole more rufescent than the others, but great variation exists between fully 

 adult birds shot in the same district. 



In general the colour is a rich olive-brown ; tip of the crest rich rufescent ; sides of 

 the head and neck greyish toward the tips ; chin and throat whitish ; body and wings 

 decidedly rufescent ; wing-coverts and ventral plumage tipped with paler colour, some- 

 times very conspicuously ; ventral surface with brownish-white shaft-streaks ; rump and 

 upper tail-coverts paler olive brown ; centre tail-feathers and often the longest tail- 

 coverts deep ferrugineous, unmarked, or finely vermiculated with dusky. Primaries 

 brown, darker on inner webs, tinged with olive on the outer webs ; secondaries and 

 tertiaries much more rufescent, either plain or finely speckled with paler toward the tips. 



Facial skin crimson ; irides hazel ; bill greenish, darker at base ; legs and feet 

 variable as in the male. Length, 530 mm.; bill from nostril, 18; wing, 210; tail, 210 j 

 tarsus, 72 ; middle toe and claw, 55 mm. 



Young Male. — Much like the female, sometimes indistinguishable, sometimes 

 darker. The succeeding moults gradually eliminate the brown and replace it with 

 black pigment, and a bird of the second year may be fully adult in appearance or 

 with every feather stained with immaturity. 



EARLY HISTORY 



Latham introduces us to this kaleege in 1823, under the name of the Sylhet 

 Pheasant. His only remarks are, " Inhabits India, brought from Sylhet, in the Province 

 of Bengal, by Sir J. Anstruther." Gray, six years later, repeated the description and 

 gave to the bird the name of lathmni. As his description is not exact, he doubtless 

 had in his possession one of the wild hybrids. G. R. Gray named it Gallophasis 

 horsfieldi in 1845, ^^<^ gave an excellent plate of the cock. The first live birds were 

 placed on exhibition twelve years later. 



SYNONYMY 



Sylhet Pheasant 'L,2.\Sxz.m, Gen. Hist. VHL 1823, p. 208. 



?Phasianus lathami Gray in Griff, ed. Cuv., HI. 1829, p. 26. 



Gallophasis horsfieldi Gray, Gen. Birds, HI. 1845, p. 498, pi. CXXVI ; Mitchell, Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 

 1858, p. 544, pi. 148, fig. 2, pi. 149, fig. I ; Sclater, Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1859, p. 205 [24 days incubation]; 

 Sclater and Wolf, Zool. Sket. 2, 1861, pi. 39. 



Euplocomus horsfieldi Blyth, Cat. Mus. As. Soc, 1849, p. 244 ; Hume, Stray Feathers, VII. 1878, p. 429. 



