74 A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 



bird-skinning. The Lu are beginning to bring things, which is a good job, so perhaps 

 I shall get on after all. 



'' 20th. Attacked again by fever — very seedy — useless. John Afar also. 



" 2ist-23rd. Nearly dead with fever — no food — no depression of temperature. 



"24th May." (Diary ends.) 



His Chinese servants carried Mr. Whitehead's body and all his luggage and 

 collections back to Hoihow, a journey which occupied nineteen days, and there the 

 British Consul forwarded the collections to the British Museum. Three males and a 

 female were secured. 



Since then a Japanese has sent a large series to Tring, where I was able to study 

 them. 



DETAILED DESCRIPTION 



Adult Male. — Under parts wholly dead black, with a steel-blue gloss on the lateral 

 plumage, and narrow white shaft-streaks on the extreme sides ; forehead brownish black, 

 merging into the metallic steel blue crown, and the long, flowing, hair-like occipital crest 

 of the same colour ; a few feathers just behind and concealed beneath the crest are black 

 and white, but the ear-coverts and the entire back and sides of the neck, and much of the 

 mantle, is snow white. 



On the mantle a very faint brown mottling of two concentric lines appears on 

 each web, increasing in blackness and solidness posteriorly ; at first both pairs are 

 equal, but on the mid-back the inner pair shows a tendency to close in on the shaft, and 

 to reassume the mottled character ; this pattern either remains to the rump or else the 

 inner pair coalesces and forms a black shaft-line, leaving but a single concentric pair 

 on the white webbing; the longer tail-coverts show a strong tendency to oblique 

 cross-barring. 



The wing markings stand out from the innermost least covert as very wide and 

 strong black lines. These are not concentric, but in the shape of one or two oblique 

 V-shaped cross-bars, the inner scapulars with as many as four, and the outer with six, 

 while a few more are added to the primaries. 



The central rectrices may be pure white, or may have five or six isolated black lines 

 on the outer web, running parallel to the shaft and margin ; the second pair is usually 

 white as to the inner web, with numerous very coarse oblique bars on the outer ; the 

 succeeding lateral feathers show a greater and greater extent of black, until it occupies 

 by far the major part of the outer web. A greater contrast to the lineated pheasant 

 could hardly be well imagined. 



Iris brownish-yellow ; wattles and facial skin scarlet ; bill greenish-white ; legs 

 coral-red. Length, 900 mm.; wing, 248; tail, 520; tarsus, 91 ; middle toe and claw, 

 61 ; spurs, 18 mm. 



Adult Female. — Crown and nape brown, indistinctly mottled with darker and 

 with a pale shaft-stripe ; there is an abrupt change on the hind neck and mantle to black 

 feathers with a wide, elliptical, tapering shaft-stripe ; on the lower mantle this changes as 

 abruptly again to a finely vermiculated rufous buff, the shaft-stripe persisting as a narrow, 

 pale buff streak, dying out on the shorter tail-coverts ; wing-coverts like the back and 



