GAME BIRDS OF INDIA AND ASIA. 57 



Stone's Pheasant. 



Phasianus elegans. Fauna Brit. Ind., Vol. 

 IV, p. 81. 



The male of this species has a great general 

 resemblance to the common English pheasant, having 

 the same green and purple head and neck, and chest- 

 nut upper back and flanks, the latter spangled 

 with purple black ; the tail also is similar, light 

 brown with black bars. But the small wing-coverts, 

 which are sandy in the English pheasant, are 

 French-grey in the preseiit bird, which also has 

 the rump or lower back gray and green instead 

 of maroon. Moreover, the glossy green-black of 

 the lower breast extends in this species right up 

 to the green neck, whereas in the home pheasant 

 the upper breast is bay with purple edgings to 

 the feathers. 



The legs are lead-coloured, and the bare skin 

 of the face scarlet. The hen is mottled with black 

 and pale drab, much like the hen of the well-known 

 pheasant at home. The absence of chestnut on 

 the outer tail-feathers will distinguish her from 

 the hen of Hume's Pheasant. 



The cock is about twenty-seven inches long, 

 with a nine-inch wing and sixteen-inch tail ; the 

 shank is about two and-a-half inches, and the 

 bill one and-a-quarter. The hen is decidedly 

 smaller, with a much shorter tail in proportion, 

 this measuring only nine inches — an inch longer 

 than her closed wing. 



This pheasant was first known from the prov- 

 ince of Szechuen in Southern China, but was 

 almost simultaneously found by Dr. J. Anderson 



