GOLDEN PHEASANT 17 



with a broad stripe of yellow buff down each side of the body. Iris olive stone colour. 

 Beak yellow, dark at the base of upper mandible. Legs and feet yellow. Bill from 

 nostril, 7 mm. ; wing, 40; tarsus, 20; middle toe and claw, 21 mm. 



Juvenile Plumage. — This plumage is, in miniature, much like that of the adult 

 female. The top of the head and nape is quite uniform dark buffy or smoky brown, the 

 side neck with pale buff shaft-streaks and sub-terminal spots. The face is paler buff, 

 and the chin and throat white. On the mantle the dorsal plumage pattern begins 

 abruptly, successive, equally broad, transverse bands of buffy brown and black, rather 

 warm on the' mantle and pale buff on the wing-coverts and secondaries. On the lower 

 back, rump and upper tail-coverts the feathers are somewhat disintegrated and the 

 pattern is almost lost. The primaries have the pale buff bands much narrower than the 

 black, and on the secondaries the buff is somewhat clouded with dark mottling. The 

 tail-feathers are long for the size of the bird, tapering gradually, but are not very narrow. 

 They are rufous brown, indistinctly mottled and clouded with dark, and with several 

 very indistinct bands across the terminal half. The ventral feathers are a rich cinnamon 

 buff, with several rather narrow transverse black bands. These are especially strong 

 and numerous on the neck, breast, sides and under tail-coverts, dying out toward the 

 mid-line as disconnected spots, and leaving the mid-belly without markings. There 

 are sixteen tail-feathers in this plumage. 



Bill bright golden yellow, darkening toward the base ; legs and feet olive yellow. 

 Iris hazel. Length, 330 mm. ; bill from nostril, 10; wing, 127 ; central tail-feather, 122 ; 

 outer tail-feather, 35 ; tarsus, 50 ; middle toe and claw, 45 mm. 



First Year Plumage. — As in all pheasants which do not acquire their adult 

 plumage at the first annual moult, young Golden Pheasants vary greatly throughout 

 this period. I have taken two cocks at the age of about seven weeks, in full juvenile 

 plumage, and by feeding one excessively and keeping it in a quiet and darkened room, 

 delayed its moult for ten or twelve days. The two birds, when they had assumed the 

 post-juvenile plumage, were entirely unlike, the late moulting bird showing an advance 

 of perhaps ten or fifteen per cent, over the other, in an approximation to the adult 

 coloration and pattern. 



In normally moulting birds the head, lower back and tail are the regions which are 

 the last to be renewed, and the result is that we have the general average showing a 

 body plumage of barred buff and black, much like the female or the juvenile, with dull 

 red head, back and rump and a tail quite like that of the adult. If we pluck out the 

 dull red feathers from the crown of a bird in this plumage when they are even only half 

 grown, hardly out of the blood sheaths, they will be replaced by the shining yellow, 

 silky crest of the adult. So rapidly are the syntheses of the pigments consummated. 



The red of the head is especially solid and well marked on the sides of the crow^n, 

 and on the chin and throat. The milage of the ruff is very distinct, the feathers being 

 somewhat larger than those of the surrounding region and unlike them in colour. Very 

 curiously, however, the colour is not what we should expect, but a pale greyish, with a 

 terminal black band and a sub-terminal light one. 



The mantle and mid-back show an increase of warm rufous, and the black bands 

 VOL. IV r> 



