Descriptions of British Diptera. 453 



mottled at their extremities. These present a singular reverse to the 

 longest tail feathers of the pheasant, in which the bars become 

 broader as they approach the end, but in this bird altogether disap- 

 pear there. Some of the feathers on the wing-coverts have the 

 shaft cream-coloured, with the centre black, ending in a point 

 towards the tip, as in the pheasant ; but the cream-coloured band 

 surrounding it in that bird is wanting, and the extremity of the 

 feather is mottled. The lower part of the back and rump has a 

 blending in about equal quantity of black and mottled plumage, 

 each feather terminating in claret colour. The only white in the 

 plumage is a spot on the shoulders similar to that exhibited by both 

 sexes of the black grouse, and a few of the vent feathers partially 

 displaying it. Under tail- coverts black, mottled with rich reddish- 

 brown at their tips. Bill intermediate between the greenish-horny 

 colour of the pheasant and the black of the Tetrao tetrix. Tarsi 

 and toes also intermediate. 



Mr Sabine and Mr Eyton describe their hybrids as bred between 

 the cock pheasant and grey-hen, but that the produce is as likely 

 to occur from the opposite sexes of these species, is indicated by 

 the following circumstance : A black-cock, a few years since, in 

 the possession of my friend, William Sinclaire, Esq. of Belfast, 

 having been kept along with a cock and two hen pheasants, beat and 

 drove away the cock whenever he approached the hens in spring, and, 

 as a brood of pheasants was wanted, had to be removed to another en- 

 closure. This black-cock at the same time displayed towards these 

 hen pheasants all the attitudes by which, in a wild state, the atten- 

 tion of the females of his own species is attracted, and his love-call, 

 so loud as to be heard at a great distance, was almost incessantly 

 uttered. He was a bird of the previous year, taken in autumn by 

 John Sinclaire, Esq. on his shooting-grounds in Ayrshire, after hav- 

 ing been ei put in" by one of his trained peregrine falcons. 



VIII. — Characters and Descriptions of the Dipterous Insects indige- 

 nous to Britain. By James Duncan, M. W. S., &c &c. (Con- 

 tinued from p. 368.) 



Genus CHRYSOPS, Meig. 

 Antenna longer than the head, projecting horizontally, some- 

 what curved upwards at the tip ; three-jointed, the two lowest joints 



NO. V. Gff 



