CEYLON JUNGLEFOWL 231 



clothed in contour plumage. The mantle is an indefinite mixture of sandy buff, reddish 

 brown and black mottling, with the shaft areas of the lighter tint. The remainder of the 

 dorsal plumage is much disintegrated, with terminal brownish mottling. The scapulars 

 and many of the coverts are tipped with buffy white. The primaries arc dark brown, 

 with sandy or whitish mottling on the outer webs ; the secondaries are heavily banded, 

 as in the adult female, but with purer whites, differentiated from the chestnut bands 

 which separate the buffy white from the black bands. Toward the tip of the inner 

 secondaries and tertiaries, the black becomes restricted to round marginal ocelli on each 

 web, and this ocellated appearance is even more pronounced on the larger wing-coverts, 

 where the black eye-like spots are framed in buffy-white. There is an unusual amount 

 of variation in this plumage, however, extremes being found both in lowland and upland 

 birds, in those from the arid south of the island and the more humid north. For 

 example, the tail-feathers in the juvenile plumage of either sex may be rich chestnut, 

 evenly mottled and vermiculated with black, or each web may have a longitudinal black 

 band down the centre, or again, there may be as many as six black cross bars, equalling 

 the intervening chestnut spaces. 



The chin and throat are pure white ; the breast, like the mantle, with the pale buffy 

 shaft-stripes much clearer and more conspicuous. The breast and belly are whitish, 

 the brown and buff mottlings dying out into an indefinite brownish tinge. The bill, legs 

 and feet are yellowish, the upper mandible sometimes quite dark. 



First Annual Moult. — A series of birds taken when this moult is nearly or 

 quite completed shows no two individuals alike. The females, having comparatively 

 little change of colour and pattern to undergo, usually moult into quite fully adult dress, 

 but the males range all the way from a richly chestnut bird mottled with black, to 

 individuals with but little remaining traces of juvenile pigment. The barred secondaries 

 are always lost, but the feathers are usually heavily mottled with brown and rufous ; 

 while the mantle shows all stages between rich chestnut, olive-yellow and the straw 

 yellow of the adult. From the birds which I have seen, the upland birds seem to moult 

 into cleaner, clearer colours, the lowland individuals usually retaining more of the 

 immature, generalized patterns. 



The succeeding moult takes the bird into the complete adult plumage. 



HYBRIDISM 



Several Englishmen in Ceylon, notably Messrs. Thomas and Johnson, have gone 

 to great pains to gather accurate data concerning the reputed sterility of the hybrids 

 between the Ceylon Junglefowl and domestic poultry. They hoped to bring proof that 

 the former had played an actual part in the origin of our barnyard fowls. This, I think, 

 is not necessary. The red junglefowl seems to supply all the requirements necessary 

 as the direct ancestor of our domestic stock, and these hybridization experiments are of 

 purely scientific rather than of atavistic interest. 



The percentage of fertility of the hybrids when bred inter se has been exceedingly 

 low. Only one tgg in each lot laid has been fertile, and of all the eggs produced (about 

 one hundred in the course of a year) only two chicks have been hatched, these living 



