Birds. 4295 



ascertain in the number of instances of hybrids mentioned in Yarrell's 

 * British Birds,' they are all the supposed produce of cock pheasants 

 and gray hens, whereas I think there is no doubt that this bird is the 

 reverse, as it appears that a black cock had for two years previously 

 to this bird being shot, frequented that particular covert, and fed with 

 the pheasants. The keeper has frequently seen them at feed together, 

 and the old black cock used to play like a cock turkey, dragging his 

 wings, and driving the cock pheasants, he being completely the 

 master of them, which is rather to be wondered at, as the pheasant 

 has spurs, the black cock none. The hybrid was shot on the 26th of 

 October, 1850, and I have no doubt he is the result of an intimacy 

 between this bird and a hen pheasant. You can trace the plumage 

 of his two parents throughout. He is a male bird ; his head and 

 beak most like a pheasant's ; the body of a rich chestnut and black ; 

 the tail the colour of a hen pheasant's, and fan-shaped : he has 

 no spurs ; his legs partially feathered ; no white tips on the wings. 

 In another wood on the same property, two hybrids were produced 

 between the wild cock pheasant and hen golden pheasant ; this took 

 place about thirteen years ago. A hen golden pheasant had escaped 

 from confinement some time previously, and it was known that she 

 was about in the coverts ; and at last, in one particular wood, it 

 was remarked that the pheasants were always disturbed, and driven 

 out of it, and it was not known for some time by what, tiil at last the 

 keeper discovered that this hen golden pheasant and two other 

 curious looking birds were so pugnacious that they drove everything 

 from the place. They were all three shot, when the other two 

 proved to be cock birds, and there is no doubt whatever of their 

 parentage, both from their shape and plumage. They are small birds, 

 and not handsome, partaking of the plumage of both sorts of phea- 

 sants without the beauty of either. They were shot in the month of 

 November, and therefore probably not in as good plumage as they 

 would have been. They have no spurs, which I suspect to be the 

 case with all hybrids, as I have one between the pheasant and com- 

 mon fowl, a male bird, which has none, also the black grouse hybrid, 

 above. I believe this to be the first instance on record of the com- 

 mon and golden pheasant breeding in a wild state ; and this was not 

 in a Norfolk covert full of half-tame pheasants, but in one of the 

 wildest parts of England, as the presence of black grouse will show. 

 I find in the ' Gardens and Menageries of the Zoological Society,' vol. 

 ii., under the head of " Golden Pheasant," that in China, where 

 the two pheasants are wild, they have never been known to produce a 



