20 A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 



The brown and buff are very plainly the more ancestral hues, and most resistant to 

 alteration, while the black, having started on the road to specialization, yields more 

 readily to new pattern and pigment changes. So on the mantle, for at least two annual 

 moults, we find the black bars replaced by brilliant iridescent green, while the four wide 

 cross-bars of chestnut or buff remain unaltered. The same is true of the tertiaries, with 

 blue replacing the black. The flight-feathers are most conservative of all, and hold to the 

 old order of things long after the plumage in general has become dominantly masculine. 



In the Amsterdam Zoological Gardens the Black-necked Golden Pheasant has been 

 bred true through four generations, with no indication of any intermediate characters 

 appearing between it and the normal Golden. In such hens the hazel brown of the eye 

 is appreciably lighter, more of a yellow than is normally the case. This correlated 

 change of colour of the iris might be expected from my observations of owls (Owls of 

 the Nearctic Region, " Eleventh Ann. Rep. N. Y. Zool. Soc." 1907, p. 9), and the 

 experiments (" Zoologica," Vol. I. No. I. 1907, p. 28) which I have carried out in regard to 

 melanism in doves. 



Buffon in 1830 (" GEuvres completes de Buffon," Tome XX. Oiseaux II. 1830) gives 

 the following quaint and somewhat imaginary account of this phenomenon : " The 

 female Golden Pheasant is a little smaller than the male ; her tail is shorter, the colours 

 of her plumage are most ordinary, and also less pleasing than those of our common 

 pheasant, but at times she becomes as handsome as the male ; one has been seen in 

 England, with Lady Essex, which, during a period of six years, gradually changed her 

 dull woodcock colour for the lovely colour of the male, from which she was distinguished 

 only by her eyes and by the length of her tail. Intelligent persons, who have had an 

 opportunity of observing these birds, have assured me that this change of colour takes 

 place in the majority of females ; that they commence when they are four years old, at 

 the time when the male is wearied of them and mistreats them ; they attain then the 

 long and narrow feathers which in the male accompany the feathers of the tail ; in a 

 word, the more they advance in age, the more they resemble the male, as this takes 

 place, more or less, in nearly all animals." 



The third type of variation in Golden Pheasants is very important and of great 

 interest. It is of such constant character that in 1865 Prof. Schlegel gave it the 

 scientific name of obscunts, and for many years the Black-throated Golden Pheasant was 

 considered to be a valid species of unknown habitat. His account of the bird is as 

 follows : " For a number of years there could be seen in the collections of the dealers in 

 live animals, also in the zoological gardens, a Golden Pheasant which differs constantly 

 and from its earliest age from the common Golden Pheasant. Numbers of this pheasant 

 are raised annually, even at Leyden, which for the most part are sent abroad. The 

 dealers are accustomed to designate this bird as the Golden Pheasant of Java, probably 

 because it was brought to Europe by the vessels coming by way of Java ; but as the 

 genus Phasianus is confined to the continent of Asia, it is probable that our vessels, 

 being engaged in commerce between Java and the east coast of Asia, have brought this 

 bird from some place on the coast. This bird, although resembling perfectly by its 

 shape and the general distribution of its colours the common Golden Pheasant, can 

 nevertheless constantly be distinguished at the first sight and in all ages by trenchant 

 characters, such as are consequently easy to be fixed upon." 



