162 A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 
skin cases, but more especially when exposed to the light for the same length of time. 
A male bird which has been mounted in the Sarawak Museum for twenty years has 
all the dark brown primaries and coverts and the black ventral plumage changed to 
pale brown, the shafts keeping much lighter than the vanes. The upper plumage has 
held true, but the black feathers of the head and neck have turned as light brown as 
those of an average female. 
The photochemical changes which have taken place are even more extreme in the 
plumage of a mounted female. In a bird which has been exposed to only a moderate 
amount of light for about eighteen years, the head and neck have become quite white, 
basally somewhat mottled with brown, while all the upper plumage has become 
extremely faded on all the uncovered portions of the feathers. The exposed parts of 
the primaries are a dirty white, and the two or three pairs of central rectrices, which 
are marred by numerous fault-bars, are irregularly whitened in the vicinity of these 
imperfections. In both this mounted specimen and in skins which have been kept 
in light-tight drawers, the blue facial skin of the females has given place to a fleshy 
tint which would readily be mistaken for a faded red. The entire aspect of the birds 
is changed, and when we remember the similar case of a radical alteration in the female 
type of Gennaeus melanonotus (p. 39), we should realize the danger of naming species 
from old skins, and should constantly keep in mind the danger of possible photophobic 
plumage in using old type specimens for purposes of comparison. 
NataL Down.—The chick in the down bears a striking resemblance to the young 
of the Bornean crested fireback, except that the general tone is warm rufous instead 
of darker. The upper parts are rich rufous, brighter on the head; the face and under 
down whitish buff, with a black bar through the face and an indistinct wash of warm 
buff over the breast. 
JUVENILE PLumace.—Here, too, as the dominant character, we find the pair of 
sub-terminal black ocelli which is so pronounced in the corresponding plumage of the 
species of Lofhura. As usual, the down persists on the head and neck long after 
the remainder of the body is clothed in the contour feathers of the juvenile plumage. 
The ventral plumage of this very transient garb is quite downy and rather characterless, 
being of a pale buff with more or less indications of transverse darker markings, and 
the mantle and back, while of firmer vaned feathers, are greyish-buff mottled with dark 
rather than distinctly patterned. The scapulars and middle wing-coverts, however, 
show this mark at its fullest development, the feather being a rather even vermiculation 
of rufous and black up to the elongate, solid black ocelli, framed very effectively basally 
with a black-lined space of rufous, and distally by the solid, broad, golden-rufous 
terminal band. On the lesser and greater coverts there is less development of pattern, 
a narrow, black-lined terminal rufous bar taking the place of the ocelli. The wing 
and tail-feathers are quite dark chestnut, with considerable variation as to black 
mottling, some individuals showing a large amount, while in others the tail is very dark 
but wholly unmarked. The rectrices are short, narrow and quite curved, the outer 
ones being almost sickle-shaped, an interesting reversal of the conditions in the adult 
male, where the outer ones are straight and the central ones curved, 
