440 THE DESCENT OP MAN. 



hybrid offspring would have a much longer tail than that of the 

 pure offspring of the common pheasant. On the other hand, if 

 the female common pheasant, with a tail much longer than that 

 of the female Soemmerring pheasant, were crossed with the male 

 of the latter, the male hybrid offspring would have a much 

 shorter tail than that of the pure offspring of Scemmerring's 

 pheasant.' 



Our fancier, in order to make his new breed with the males 

 of a pale-blue tint, and the females unchanged, would have to 

 continue selecting the males during many generations; and each 

 stage of paleness would have to be fixed in the males, and ren- 

 dered latent in the females. The task would be an extremely 

 difficult one, and has never been tried, but might possibly be suc- 

 cessfully carried out. The chief obstacle would be the early and 

 complete loss of the pale-blue tint, from the necessity of reiterated 

 crosses with the slaty female, the latter not having at first any 

 latent tendency to produce pale-blue offspring. 



On the other hand, if one or two males were to vary ever so 

 slightly in paleness, and the variations were from the first 

 limited in their transmission to the male sex, the task of making 

 a new breed of the desired kind would be easy, for such males 

 would simply have to be selected and matched with ordinary 

 females. An analogous case has actually occurred, for there are 

 breeds of the pigeon in Belgium* in which the males alone are 

 marked with black stri». So again Mr. Tegetmeier has recently 

 shown'^ that dragons not rarely produce silver-colored birds, 

 which are almost always hens; and he himself has bred ten 

 such females. It is on the other hand a very unusual event when 

 a silver male is produced; so that nothing would be easier, if 

 desired, than to make a breed of dragons with blue males and 

 silver females. This tendency is indeed so strong that when Mr. 

 ■fegetmeier at last got a silver male and matched him with one 

 of the silver females, he expected to get a breed with both sexes 

 thus colored; he was however disappointed, for the young male 

 reverted to the blue color of his grandfather, the young female 

 alone being silver. No doubt with patience this tendency to re- 

 version in the males, reared from an occasional silver male 

 matched with a silver hen, might be eliminated, and then both 

 sexes would be coloi-ed alike; and this very process has been 



= Temminck says that the tail of the female Phasianus Soemmer- 

 ringil is only six inches long, 'Planches coloriees,' vol. v. 1838, pp. iS'i 

 and 4S8: the measurements above given were made for me by Mr. 

 Sclater. For the common pheasant, see Macgillivray, 'Hist. Brit. 

 Birds,' vol. 1. pp. 118-121. 



■■ Dr. Chapuis, 'Le Pigeon Voyageur Beige,' 1865, p. 87. 



» The 'Field,' Sept. 1872. 



