232 A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 



twelve and eighteen days respectively. The following summary gives us the general 

 results of the Ceylon experiments : — 

 The experiments have shown that 



1. The hybrids are not always sterile when bred inter se. 



2. The hybrids are not sterile when bred back to the domestic parent (i.e. hybrid 



cock with domestic hen). 



3. There is some indication that the hybrids may sometimes be fertile when mated 



back to the jungle parent (i.e. Junglecock and hybrid hen). 



4. Jungle hens have never laid in captivity. 



While, without much difficulty, it is possible then to obtain hybrids from a cross 

 between the wild Ceylon Junglecock and a domestic hen, yet these hybrids bred 

 together are, to all intents and purposes, sterile, while the hybrids of the wild red 

 junglefowl are as fertile as either of the parents. 



I believe that very rarely the wild Junglecock crosses voluntarily with the native 

 poultry, and here and there hybrids resulting from such interbreeding are to be found 

 in the native villages. But that this is a frequent or widespread occurrence seems to 

 me an error based on groundless assertions of the natives. Many so-called hybrids were 

 brought to me and proved to be nothing but domestic birds. 



EARLY HISTORY 



The first mention of this species in scientific literature seems to be in the year 1831, 

 in Lesson's Traitd d Ornithologie, where he names the bird Coq Lafayette, ''qui;' as 

 Des Murs says, '' indique suffisamment r influence des preoccupations politiques du 

 moment r Lesson has this to say of it: '' Gallus Lafayetii : Coq sauvage de Ceylan, 

 Gal. de Paris. Deux petit s barbillons a la mandibule infdrieure ; plumes de la 

 collerette effildes, jaune d'or, avec une fiamme brune au centre ; le thorax recouvert de 

 tongues plumes etroites rouge dor 4, flammdes de noir ; bas-ventre noir ; queue court e, 

 brune ; un demi-collier violet sous la peau nue du devant du cou. Habile Ceylan. 

 [Leschenaulty 



About the same year, Gray, in the volume of illustrations which he gives from the 

 collection of Major-General Hardwicke, figures (pi. 43, Fig. 2) the female. This he calls 

 Lord Stanley's Hen, Callus stanleyi, Gray, but gives no text of explanation. In 1849 

 Des Murs in his Inconographie Ornithologique gives an excellent plate of the cock. He 

 says this bird had been donated to the Paris Museum in 1822 by Leschenault, who 

 brought it from Ceylon, and through some curious mischance had passed unnoticed for 

 nine years until discovered by Lesson. Des Murs, of course, did not recognize the hen 

 in Gray's plate as the female of this Junglefowl, so he ends his account: "// est 

 a regret ter que Ion ne connaisse pas lafemelle du C. LafayetHy 



The earliest account of the general habits — a good one, too — is that of Layard, in 

 the Annals and Magazine of Natural History for 1854. 



