SATYR TRAGOPAN 63 



December or May, apparently in full moult and yet with every feather full grown, and 

 not a blood sheath upon the body. 



Occasionally upon typically first winter breast plumage we may find several 

 scattered crimson feathers with the pearl-grey spot of the adult. This results from the 

 accidental loss of a feather near the time of final moult. 



When we consider the tremendous difference in the various altitudes covered by 

 Tragopans, and that by some trivial fright or other cause a single flight may carry them 

 thousands of feet downward, we can see good cause for the great variation in the time 

 of moult, with its attendant consequence of retardation or advance in pigment formation. 



Reviewing the plumages as a whole, we find an interesting sequence in the male 

 bird : (a) a down plumage of definite regional patterns ; (&) a juvenile plumage of 

 definitely patterned feathers ; (c) a first winter's plumage of very generalized, confused, 

 female-like coloration ; (d) an adult plumage of specialized regional and feather colour 

 and pattern. 



EARLY HISTORY AND SYNONYMY 



Long before the magic year of 1758, whence date our first binominal scientific 

 names, the Satyr Tragopan was known and written about. In 1750 George Edwards 

 gives us a very quaint, and perhaps the first, account of the Horned Indian Pheasant, as 

 he calls it, which he knew only from a head preserved in spirits and a coloured "draught 

 sent from Bengal." This latter seemed to him so truthfully to represent the appear- 

 ance that he copied and published it in his "Natural History of Birds." We gain an 

 excellent idea of his conscientious mode of work from a few lines in regard to this 

 Indian sketch : " The tail appeared, in the original draught, a little bushy at the end, as 

 if broken off by being kept in a cage or coop ; it was in length of the proportion I have 

 here given it ; but I imagine this most rare and curious bird, in its perfection, has the 

 tail something if not a great deal longer ; so that I have left it doubtful by casting it 

 behind a tree. I believe this capital bird has not been described by any author. . . . 

 The original drawing is underwrit the Napaul Pheasant." 



Edwards gave it no scientific name, but Brisson gave it three, and in his elaborate 

 parallel French and Latin calls it Phasianus bengalensis cornutus. In 1766, in his 12th 

 edition of " Systema Naturae," Linnaeus calls it Meleagris satyra, the latter name being 

 the one by which it is known to-day. 



Tragopan satyra 



Homed Indian Pheasant Edwards, Nat. Hist. Birds, III. 1750, pi. 116. 



Phasianus betigalensis cornutus Brisson, Orn., VI. 1760, App. p. 14. 



Meleagris satyra Linnaeus, S. N., I. 1766, p. 269; Latham, Ind. Orn., II. 1790, p. 619 ; Griffith, ed. Cuv., 

 III. 1829, pi. 



Le Napaul ou Faisa?i cornu Buffon, Hist. Nat. Ois., II. 1771, p. 362. 



Phasianus cornutus Muller, Suppl. Linn. S. N., 1776, p. 125 ; Stephen, in Shaw's Gen. Z00L, XI. 1819, 

 P- 239. 



Horned Turkey Latham, Gen. Syn., II. Pt. II. 1783, p. 680 ; id. Suppl., I. 1787, p. 203. 



Penelope satyra Gmelin, S. N., I. Pt. II. 1788, p. 733 ; Bonnat, Tabl. Encycl. Meth., I. 1791, p. 170, pi. 84, 

 fig. 1. 



Phasianus satyrus Temminck, Pig. et. Gall., II. 1813, p. 349; III. 1815, p. 672; Vieillot, N. Diet. d'Hist. 

 Nat, XI. 1817, p. 39 ; id. Gal. Ois., II. 1825, p. 23, pi. 206. 



Horned Pheasant Latham, Gen. Hist., VIII. 1823, p. 208. 



