WILD KALEEGE HYBRIDS 93 
not intend to go into similar detail in regard to all the kaleege which have received 
names, and one instance must suffice. I have taken a series of specimens in the vajfifes- 
sharpet group, the chief hybrid buffer forms occurring between /zweatus on the west 
and zycthemerus on the east, and examined them carefully with a view to recording the 
variation, not only in the adult birds, but in immature pheasants, in juvenile and first 
year plumage. This series of some thirty-five birds is chiefly from my own collection 
and from the Tring Museum. The localities show that the variation is absolutely not 
dependent on environment, some of the extremes coming from the Ruby Mines district, 
while equally variable specimens were collected far to the southward. 
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF KALEEGE OF THE RUFIPES-SHARPEI GROUP, RANGING 
FROM MOGOK IN THE RUBY MINES DISTRICT TO PAZAUNG IN THE SOUTHERN 
SELACING aS ICASE ETS: 
Apu_t Marre.—Facial skin well developed, scarlet; forehead, chin and throat dull 
black; long flowing crest shining steel blue; longest feathers 80 mm. Entire ventral 
surface dead black down the middle of breast and belly; the flanks, thighs, and under 
tail-coverts with wide, shining, steel-blue margins. Ear coverts white, spotted and 
indistinctly banded with black. 
Feathers of nape immediately behind crest white, with an excess of black in the 
form of a wide, elongated shaft-patch, a concentric line, and a narrow margin. On the 
feathers of the anterior upper neck the black decreases in amount, but has the same 
pattern. As we go back, the number of black lines increases. The method of this 
increase is by the expansion of the shaft-spot into an elongated kite-shaped band, when 
at once another spot of black appears in the centre, which a few rows posteriorly will in 
turn expand into a more or less circular band and give rise on the shaft at its centre to 
the anlage of the succeeding black line. 
By this process of increase we find on the mantle five concentric lines on each web 
(one marginal), each pair joining on the shaft, besides a narrow shaft-streak, within the 
inner or fifth. There is no suggestion of convergence of the lines proximally, as 
they run straight backward, and disappear at once in the monochrome grey of the 
basal down. 
On the midback a sixth line has appeared, there being six well-developed concentric 
pairs, and a seventh or even eighth on the rump (always counting the narrow black 
marginal fringe as a true line). 
On the median and longer tail-coverts we find a new method of linear formation 
in progress, namely, the insertion of new lines between the old, appearing first as mere 
mottled streaks, and, in addition, the coalescing of lines near the posterior margins, the 
lines now lying obliquely to the shaft and not parallel, the outermost. (as well as the 
marginal) extending unbroken the entire length of the feather, but the inner ones dying 
out or coalescing with others. 
On the central rectrices we find this pattern carried at once to an extreme, but with 
such variation that the feathers may be said to be black, banded obliquely with white. 
The amount of white increases from the outer feathers inward, and in some specimens 
the inner webs of the central rectrices are almost wholly white. 
The length of the tail is extremely variable, and I have recorded the length of the 
