4 A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 
the 5th or 6th is slightly the longest. Thé tarsus is much longer than the middle 
toe and claw, and is armed in the male with a pair of stout, curved and moderately 
long spurs. The feet and legs are strong, and vary greatly as to colour, being 
scarlet, greenish, whitish or brown. 
A generalized brownish olive is the dominant colour of the females, more or less 
variegated with buffy yellow, white and black. The secondary sexual characters of 
the males, with the exception of the spurs, consist only of increased size and more 
specialized colour and pattern. This latter shows great variation, what may be 
taken as the most generalized being an equal black and white vermiculation, produc- 
ing a grey effect. On the one hand, we find a disappearance of the white, giving us 
a series of black, or metallic glossed birds, with solid patches of white, and greyish 
under-parts; and again a dominance of the white, the black lines being greatly 
reduced. Finally the metallic hue may be varied so that the bird is brilliant in blue, 
green and dull crimson. In the metallic group the feathers of the rump tend to be 
truncated, with a disintegrated fringe, which may be of a special colour or even 
structurally specialized. This hints strongly of the still more modified rump in 
Lophura and Acomus. 
GENNAEUS 
Type 
Gennaeus Wagler, Isis, 1832, p. 1228 , : : . % . G. nycthemerus 
Nycthemerus Seeincen Class. Birds, II. 1837, s coal : Pe é by te 45 
Alectrophasis Gray, List Genera Birds, ed. 2, 1841, p. 78 . : . : . G. cuviert 
Grammatoptilus Reichenback, Nat. Syst. Vogel, 1852, p. 30 . 3 ! . G. lineatus 
Fierophasis Elliot, Mon. Phas. 1872, p. 2, text to pl. XXV.  . n . . G. swinhoie 
For many reasons the genus Gexuaeus is the most interesting in the family Phasz- 
anidae, and especially because of the puzzling nature of many of the forms. In the field, 
my experience with these birds extended from the haunts of a@/bocristatus in Kashmir 
to mycthemerus in Fokien, and from orsfeldi in Upper Burma to “meatus in Lower 
Burma. I collected, or made notes upon, many of the forms, not only of adults in 
full plumage, but of moulting birds and those in immature dress. Forearmed with 
the details of what had already been published on the subject, I was able to search 
more intelligently and with more direct design than would otherwise have been the 
case. More than this, however, was the aid given by the English sportsmen in 
Burma, who in some cases furnished me with data and specimens which were of 
the greatest help. In one or two instances these were the very men who had 
collected the original types, so their assistance cannot be over-estimated. It seems 
quite certain that any future investigation of this group will but slightly affect the 
general results I have reached. I feel all the more certain in stating this belief 
because I find myself in almost perfect agreement with the general conclusions of 
Prof. Alessandro Ghigi, at least as regards the method of evolution of these birds. 
It is most significant that while the conclusions of this Italian ornithologist were 
reached by a study of the phenomena of experimental hybridism, and those of mine 
by independent observation of wild shot individuals, our results differ only in very 
minor details. His paper to which I refer is Ricerche di Sestematica Sperimentale 
sul geneve Gennaeus Wagler+ 
1 Memoria R. Accademia Scienze dell’ Instituto di Bologna (Bologna, 1909). 
ee 
og 
