LOBIOPHASIS 



WHITE-TAILED WATTLED PHEASANT 



Family PHASIANIDAE 



Subfamily PHASIANINAE 



Genus LOBIOPHASIS 



The remarkably specialized Bornean pheasant which alone forms this genus 

 finds a quite natural position at the extremity of specialized radiation of the Gennaeus- 

 Lophura group. As the maximum of plumage development has found vent in the 

 secondary wing-feathers of the argus and the tail-coverts of the peacock, so in the 

 Bornean Wattled Pheasant it is the tail itself which, in number of feathers, has 

 exceeded all bounds for the family, and in the male consists of more than thirty 

 feathers. 



No crest is present, but much of the head is bare of feathers, with the addition, 

 in the male, of three pairs of highly developed wattles, a small pair on the lores on 

 each side of the base of the culmen, a much larger pair on each side of the occiput, 

 and an extremely long, more or less pendant, pair on each side of the throat. All 

 three pairs of wattles are visible in the female in a rudimentary condition. 



The ist primary is very much shorter than the 2nd, which is equal in length to 

 the loth. The 5th is the longest in this series. 



The tail in the fully adult male is composed of thirty to thirty-two white feathers, 

 the variation in number having nothing to do with age, but being a wholly individual 

 character. The central pairs are extremely curved, and more than twice the length of 

 the outer pairs. On many of the latter the web is defective or absent from much 

 of the terminal portion of the shaft, which is thickened and spine-like. In the tail 

 of the female there seems to be always twenty-six feathers, of more equal length 

 than in the male. 



The spur is short and stout in the male, rudimentary in the female; the tarsus 

 is considerably longer than the middle toe and claw. 



LOBIOPHASIS 



Type. 



Lobiophasis Sharpe, Ann. Mag. Nat. His. (4), XIV. 1874, P- 373 • • L. bulweri. 



The genus consists of but a single species, the White-tailed Wattled Pheasant, 

 Lobiophasis bulweri Sharpe, and there is little chance that a second exists. As far 

 as we know, it is confined to the central parts of Borneo. 



VOL. II 145 u 



