232 A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 
twelve and eighteen days respectively. The following summary gives us the general 
results of the Ceylon experiments :— 
The experiments have shown that 
1, The hybrids are not always sterile when bred zyer se. 
2. The hybrids are not sterile when bred back to the domestic parent (ze. hybrid 
cock with domestic hen). 
3. There is some indication that the hybrids may sometimes be fertile when mated 
back to the jungle parent (¢.e. Junglecock and hybrid hen). 
4. Jungle hens have never laid in captivity. 
While, without much difficulty, it is possible then to obtain hybrids from a cross 
between the wild Ceylon Junglecock and a domestic hen, yet these hybrids bred 
together are, to all intents and purposes, sterile, while the hybrids of the wild red 
junglefowl are as fertile as either of the parents. 
I believe that very rarely the wild Junglecock crosses voluntarily with the native 
poultry, and here and there hybrids resulting from such interbreeding are to be found 
in the native villages. But that this is a frequent or widespread occurrence seems to 
me an error based on groundless assertions of the natives. Many so-called hybrids were 
brought to me and proved to be nothing but domestic birds. 
EARLY HISTORY 
The first mention of this species in scientific literature seems to be in the year 1831, 
in Lesson’s 7vazté a’ Ornithologie, where he names the bird Cog Lafayette, “gut,” as 
Des Murs says, ‘“‘zudique suffisamment influence des préoccupations politiques du 
moment.’ Lesson has this to say of it: “ Gallus Lafayetu: Cog sauvage de Ceylan, 
Gal. de Paris. Deux petits barbillons a la mandibule inférieure; plumes de la 
collevette effilées, gaune dor, avec une flamme brune au centre, le thorax recouvert de 
longues plumes étroites vouge doré, flammées de now, bas-ventre now, queue courte, 
brune; un demi-collier violet sous la peau nue du devant du cou. Habite Ceylan. 
(Leschenault).” . 
About the same year, Gray, in the volume of illustrations which he gives from the 
collection of Major-General Hardwicke, figures (pl. 43, Fig. 2) the female. This he calls 
Lord Stanley's Hen, Gal/us stanleyi, Gray, but gives no text of explanation. In 1849 
Des Murs in his /uconographie Ornithologique gives an excellent plate of the cock. He 
says this bird had been donated to the Paris Museum in 1822 by Leschenault, who 
brought it from Ceylon, and through some curious mischance had passed unnoticed for 
nine years until discovered by Lesson. Des Murs, of course, did not recognize the hen 
in Gray’s plate as the female of this Junglefowl, so he ends his account: ‘“‘// est 
a vegvetter que lon ne connaisse pas la femelle du G. Lafayeti.” . 
The earliest account of the general habits—a good one, too—is that of Layard, in 
the Annals and Magazine of Natural History for 1854. 
