164 F. Finn — General Notes on Variation in Birth, [No. 3, 



Head of Jungle Mtnah, abnormally bare in face. 



The rump becomes bald in many birds, and the tail-coverts and 

 lesser wing-coverts drop out. 



Baldness over the whole head frequently occurs in caged birds ; 

 and I have seen it in a wild House Mynah (Acridotheres tristis) more 

 than once. In this case the whole bare skin of the head was bright 

 yellow like the skin round the eye, which is normally bare in this 

 species. 



In caged House-Mynahs in England ( but not in India) I have seen 

 this circum-ocular skin faded to white, while the bill and feet remained 

 yellow. The white facial skin characterizes the young bird naturally. 



A Cassowary ( Casuarius galeatus) at the London Zoological Gardens 

 last year (1901) showed a large amount of irregular naked skin on the 

 back, which was coloured pink and blue, in faint imitation of the hues 

 of the bare head and neck, In a Cassowary which recently died at the 

 Calcutta Zoological Garden I found to my surprise that the skin on the 

 body was dull white like human skin. 



The overgrowth of the bill, claws, and scales of the shank is patho- 

 logical, and is not necessarily due to old age or absence of wear, which 

 cannot affect the scales of the shank, I have seen a Canary become 

 very soaly-legged in its second year, while another, ten years old, had 

 feet and legs as smooth as a bird of the year. 



The feathers frequently become more or less reverted, as in frizzled 

 fowls, in wild gallinaceous birds kept entirely under cover ; this I have 

 seen in India in several species of Pheasants and Quails. In one case a 

 single hen Pheasant (the species was Fhasianus torquatus) was affected, 

 while a cock and several other hens, kept under the same conditions, 

 were not. 



H. Spontaneous Variation under Domestication. 



While Darwin has very fully and completely gone into the question 

 of the extent of the modifications which can be effected by selective 

 breeding, little attention seems to have been paid to the range of spon- 

 taneous variation in birds under domestication, the material, in fact, on 



