74 A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 
bird-skinning. The Lt are beginning to bring things, which is a good job, so perhaps 
I shall get on after all. 
“20th. Attacked again by fever—very seedy—useless. John Afar also. 
“21st-23rd. Nearly dead with fever—no food—no depression of temperature. 
“24th May.” (Diary ends.) 
His Chinese servants carried Mr. Whitehead’s body and all his luggage and 
collections back to Hoihow, a journey which occupied nineteen days, and there the 
British Consul forwarded the collections to the British Museum. Three males and a 
female were secured. 
Since then a Japanese has sent a large series to Tring, where I was able to study 
them. 
DETAILED DESCRIPTION 
ApuLtt MaLe.—Under parts wholly dead black, with a steel-blue gloss on the lateral 
plumage, and narrow white shaft-streaks on the extreme sides ; forehead brownish black, 
merging into the metallic steel blue crown, and the long, flowing, hair-like occipital crest 
of the same colour ; a few feathers just behind and concealed beneath the crest are black 
and white, but the ear-coverts and the entire back and sides of the neck, and much of the 
mantle, is snow white. 
On the mantle a very faint brown mottling of two concentric lines appears on 
each web, increasing in blackness and solidness posteriorly; at first both pairs are 
equal, but on the mid-back the inner pair shows a tendency to close in on the shaft, and 
to reassume the mottled character; this pattern either remains to the rump or else the 
inner pair coalesces and forms a black shaft-line, leaving but a single concentric pair 
on the white webbing; the longer tail-coverts show a strong tendency to oblique 
cross-barring. 
The wing markings stand out from the innermost least covert as very wide and 
strong black lines. These are not concentric, but in the shape of one or two oblique 
V-shaped cross-bars, the inner scapulars with as many as four, and the outer with six, 
while a few more are added to the primaries. 
The central rectrices may be pure white, or may have five or six isolated black lines 
on the outer web, running parallel to the shaft and margin; the second pair is usually 
white as to the inner web, with numerous very coarse oblique bars on the outer; the 
succeeding lateral feathers show a greater and greater extent of black, until it occupies 
by far the major part of the outer web. A greater contrast to the lineated pheasant 
could hardly be well imagined. 
Iris brownish-yellow; wattles and facial skin scarlet ; bill greenish-white ; legs 
coral-red. Length, g00 mm.; wing, 248; tail, 520; tarsus, 91 ; middle toe and claw, 
61; spurs, 18 mm. 
ApuLt FemaLe.—Crown and nape brown, indistinctly mottled with darker and 
with a pale shaft-stripe; there is an abrupt change on the hind neck and mantle to black 
feathers with a wide, elliptical, tapering shaft-stripe ; on the lower mantle this changes as 
abruptly again to a finely vermiculated rufous buff, the shaft-stripe persisting as a narrow, 
pale buff streak, dying out on the shorter tail-coverts ; wing-coverts like the back and 
