WILD KALEEGE HYBRIDS 93 



not intend to go into similar detail in regard to all the kaleege which have received 

 names, and one instance must suffice. I have taken a series of specimens in the rufipes- 

 sharpei group, the chief hybrid buffer forms occurring between lineatus on the west 

 and nydhemerus on the east, and examined them carefully with a view to recording the 

 variation, not only in the adult birds, but in immature pheasants, in juvenile and first 

 year plumage. This series of some thirty-five birds is chiefly from my own collection 

 and from the Tring Museum. The localities show that the variation is absolutely not 

 dependent on environment, some of the extremes coming from the Ruby Mines district, 

 while equally variable specimens were collected far to the southward. 



DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF KALEEGE OF THE RUFIPES-SHARPEI GROUP, RANGING 

 FROM MOGOK IN THE RUBY MINES DISTRICT TO PAZAUNG IN THE SOUTHERN 

 SHAN STATES. 



Adult Male. — Facial skin well developed, scarlet ; forehead, chin and throat dull 

 black ; long flowing crest shining steel blue ; longest feathers 80 mm. Entire ventral 

 surface dead black down the middle of breast and belly ; the flanks, thighs, and under 

 tail-coverts with wide, shining, steel-blue margins. Ear coverts white, spotted and 

 indistinctly banded with black. 



Feathers of nape immediately behind crest white, with an excess of black in the 

 form of a wide, elongated shaft-patch, a concentric line, and a narrow margin. On the 

 feathers of the anterior upper neck the black decreases in amount, but has the same 

 pattern. As we go back, the number of black lines increases. The method of this 

 increase is by the expansion of the shaft-spot into an elongated kite-shaped band, when 

 at once another spot of black appears in the centre, which a few rows posteriorly will in 

 turn expand into a more or less circular band and give rise on the shaft at its centre to 

 the anlage of the succeeding black line. 



By this process of increase we find on the mantle five concentric lines on each web 

 (one marginal), each pair joining on the shaft, besides a narrow shaft-streak, within the 

 inner or fifth. There is no suggestion of convergence of the lines proximally, as 

 they run straight backward, and disappear at once in the monochrome grey of the 

 basal down. 



On the midback a sixth line has appeared, there being six well-developed concentric 

 pairs, and a seventh or even eighth on the rump (always counting the narrow black 

 marginal fringe as a true line). 



On the median and longer tail-coverts we find a new method of linear formation 

 in progress, namely, the insertion of new lines between the old, appearing first as mere 

 mottled streaks, and, in addition, the coalescing of lines near the posterior margins, the 

 lines now lying obliquely to the shaft and not parallel, the outermost (as well as the 

 marginal) extending unbroken the entire length of the feather, but the inner ones dying 

 out or coalescing with others. 



On the central rectrices we find this pattern carried at once to an extreme, but with 

 such variation that the feathers may be said to be black, banded obliquely with white. 

 The amount of white increases from the outer feathers inward, and in some specimens 

 the inner webs of the central rectrices are almost wholly white. 



The length of the tail is extremely variable, and I have recorded the length of the 



