i64 A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 



shaft bare, showing that the congenital degeneration is evident long before the time 

 for the normal growth of this plumage. The size of this adventitious feather is not 

 correlated with the adult colour, but is nicely adjusted to the length of the chestnut 

 feathers growing on either side. Thus while the normal chestnut outer tail-feather of 

 the second-year plumage is about 115 mm., and the corresponding white feather of a 

 fully adult bird 220 mm. an adventitious outer rectrice appearing during the second 

 year will be nearer the lesser than the greater length. Thus we see that the static 

 pigmental and structural change in the blood long precedes that of size, and whether 

 it is a direct adaptation or not, the danger to the bird at this age of undue con- 

 spicuousness together with a hindrance of the normal use of the tail in flight, is certainly 

 avoided. The presence of a single long, projecting white feather would assuredly be 

 a considerable handicap to the immature pheasant. It was from exactly such a case 

 as this — the asymmetrical appearance of a second-year tail with an adventitious white 

 feather or two, that confirmed Sharpe's suspicion that the chestnut-tailed bird was only 

 the immature of the white-tailed adults. 



Throughout this year's growth there is considerable increase in the size of the 

 wattles, and after they have reached a very moderate length the occipital wattles show 

 their characteristic, darkened, bifurcated tips. But it is not until several months after 

 the next moult into fully adult plumage that they attain full size, at the period of the 

 next breeding season. 



Bill from nostril, 19; wing, 248; tail, 188; tarsus, 88; middle toe and claw, 

 63 mm. 



Parasites. — White-tailed Pheasants appear to be particularly subject to the 

 presence of Mallophaga, and seldom do we find a bird without numbers of the empty 

 flattened egg-cases tightly attached to the barbs of the ventral plumage. I have seen 

 some cases where there were so many hundred of these, and so evenly distributed, that 

 they gave the appearance of some normal structure of the feathers themselves. 



EARLY HISTORY 



It is remarkable how long this splendid species of pheasant evaded discovery 

 throughout the first fifty years when collectors were gathering specimens of vertebrates 

 from various parts of Borneo. Wallace never apparently heard of it, and as late as 

 1874 Count Salvadori did not include it in his "Catalogo sistematico degli Uccelli di 

 Borneo." In December of that same year, however. Sir Hugh Low obtained a specimen 

 in the mountains bordering the upper Lawas River in the Sultanate of Brunei, and 

 gave it to Sir Henry Bulwer, Governor of Labuan. The latter gentleman forwarded 

 and presented it to the British Museum, and Sharpe at once described it, naming it 

 after the donor. In 1875 Gould figured this specimen in his " Birds of Asia." 



Two years later a pair of Wattled Pheasants was obtained alive, the male dying 

 in Java, the female reaching Amsterdam, but surviving only a few weeks. Sclater 

 figured the female in the "Proceedings of the Zoological Society" for 1876. In the 

 following year a pheasant was obtained by a succeeding Governor of Labuan from the 

 Lawas River with rich chestnut tail-feathers, and the concensus of opinion of Sharpe, 



