24 A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 
Facial skin scarlet, with a scattering of minute black featherlets. Bill yellowish or 
greenish horn, darker basally. Irides hazel. Legs and feet brownish, sometimes very 
pale. -Claws black. Weight, 1 Ib. 6 ozs. to 2 Ibs. Length, 500 to 730, averaging 
600 mm. ; extent, 620 to 680; wing, 225; tail, 210; tarsus, 67; middle toe and claw, 
55; bill from nostril, 17 mm. The spurs in the female are sharp, slightly elevated 
scalules, 
CHICK IN Down.—The crown is “chocolate brown, with the sides of the head and 
crown rufous, pale on former, rich and somewhat chestnut on the latter; ear coverts 
dark brown; upper plumage brown, minutely freckled with black, each feather with paler 
edging, a conspicuous white spot at the tip, and a broad sub-terminal bar of black edged 
with rufous ; wing-coverts like the back. Lower plumage dull pale brown, the feathers 
with whitish shafts and pale edges.” 
JUVENILE PLumMAcE.—The juvenile plumage is of a very indefinite buffy brown, 
indistinctly mottled with blackish, darker, more greyish above, paler brown below. 
Most of the mantle feathers and all of the wing-coverts have a broad terminal band of 
pale brownish white, and a still wider sub-terminal cross bar of black, one of the most 
characteristic juvenile marks of this genus. The sexes are distinctly marked in the 
juvenile plumage, the males being much darker and the females more of a rufous, reddish 
brown. 
First YEAR MALe PLuMmaceE.—As in all the members of this genus, the young bird 
moults directly from the juvenile garb into the adult plumage. There is, however, much 
variation in these first year’s feathers, owing to the advanced or retarded condition of 
pigment formation in the blood of each individual. I have known of instances where 
the moult resulted in fully adult patterns and coloration, where the crest was almost as 
white as it is ever found, and where the wings appeared metallic and unmarked. In two 
of these cases the birds were in captivity, well nourished by an abundance of food, but 
the moult retarded by unseasonable cold weather. The changes in the blood were 
therefore apparently completed, and the transition from immature to fully mature was 
clean and abrupt. 
On the other hand, in both wild and captive individuals we often find a partial 
assumption of adult patterns at this moult, although this is apparent only in more or 
less inconspicuous characters—which, however, are full of significance and interest. 
The most noticeable of such characters are the absence, or extremely poor develop- 
ment, of metallic gloss on the plumage, and the presence of whitish vermiculation on the 
wing-coverts, secondaries, upper tail-coverts and tail-feathers. The mantle shows the 
absence of gloss more commonly than other parts of the plumage. The entire exposed 
outer webs of the greater coverts and secondaries are sometimes thickly vermiculated 
with pale brown during the first year of the bird’s life, and the same is true of the three 
or four middle pairs of tail-feathers, except that in this case the vermiculations are 
greyish white and much coarser. As I have said, this character occasionally persists 
even in very old individuals. 
The young female in first-year plumage closely resembles the adult. The most 
