OBSEETATIOTTS OJT BIHDS. 313 



thougli it weiglied. three pounds three ounces and a half,* 

 the weight of a large full-grown cock pheasant, yet there was 

 no sign of any spurs on the legs, as is usual with all grown 

 cock pheasants, who have long ones. The legs and feet were 

 naked of feathers, and therefore it could he nothing of the 

 grouse kind. In the tail were no long, bending feathers, 

 such as cock pheasants usually have, and are characteristic 

 of the sex. The tail was much shorter than the tail of a hen 

 pleasant, and blunt and square at the end. The back, wing- 

 feathers, and tail, were aU of a pale russet, curiously streaked, 

 somewhat like the upper parts of a hen partridge. I returned 

 it with my verdict, that it was probably a spurious, or hybrid 

 hen-bird, bred between a cock pheasant and some domestic 

 fowl. When I came to talk with the keeper who brought 

 it, he told me that some pearhens had been known last 

 summer to haunt the coppices and coverts where this mule 

 was found. 



Mr. Ehner, of Parnham, the famous game-painter, was em- 

 ployed to take an exact copy of this curious bird. 



N.B. It ought to be mentioned, that some good judges 

 have imagined this bird to have been a stray grouse or 

 black-cock ; it is, however, to be observed, that Mr. W. 

 remarks, that its legs and feet were naked, whereas those 

 of the grouse are feathered to the toes. White. 



Mr. Latham observes, that "pearhens, after they have 

 done laying, sometimes assume the plumage of the male 

 bird," and has given a figure of the male-feathered pea-hen 

 now to be seen in the Leverian Museum ; and M. Saleme 

 remarks, that " the hen pheasant, when she has done laying 

 and sitting, wiU get the plumage of the male." May not 

 this hybrid pheasant, as Mr. White calls it, be a bird of this 

 kind ? that is, an old hen pheasant which has just begun to 

 assume the plumage of the cock.f Maekwick. 



* Hen pheasants usually weigh only two pounds ten ounces. 

 + See the account by John Hunter, in the Philosophical Tra/nsact. Art. 

 XXX. 1760. " The subject of the account is a hen pheasant with the feathers 

 of the cock. The author concludes, that it is most probable that all those 

 hen pheasants which are found wild, and have the feathers of the cock, were 

 formerly perfect hens, but that now they are changed with age, and perhaps by 

 certain constitutional circumstances." It appears also, that the hen, taking 



