PALAWAN PEACOCK PHEASANT 93 



had seen them using it, I feel sure he would have advanced such proof. It is 

 probably based on the belief of one of his men. 



Early in the year 1831, Lesson in his Trait e dOrnithologie enumerated this 

 species, calling it napoleojiis. On May 14th of the same year Temminck published 

 the description of a male under the name emphaiium, from a single specimen in the 

 museum of the Prince of Essling. Its home was unknown, but it was conjectured to 

 be a native of one of the Sunda Islands or the Moluccas. 



A second specimen was acquired by the British Museum from Verreaux, its home 

 still being unknown. G. R. Gray accredited it to the Moluccas ; Sclater and Elliot 

 selected Borneo as its more or less probable habitat. In 1877, almost fifty years 

 after its first description, Everett collected specimens in Palawan, an island lying off 

 the north coast of Borneo, and partly bridging the geographical gap between that 

 great island and the Philippines, and we now know that the bird is confined to this 

 island. 



DETAILED DESCRIPTION 



Adult Male. — This is one of the most specialized of the Peacock Pheasants, 

 closest perhaps to schleiermacheri. Top of the head and nape, including a long, 

 straight crown crest, dark bottle green, with a bluish cast. The crest extends straight 

 back and is once again as long as the head. Lower neck with short, black, recurved 

 feathers. On the upper mantle a broad, terminal band of golden green appears, some- 

 times extending faintly around on the fore neck. This increases on the lower mantle 

 until the entire visible portion of the feathers is metallic, green around the margin 

 and end, and becoming a beautiful dark ultramarine or sapphire blue in the centre 

 and toward the jet-black, concealed, basal half of the feather. With less blue apparent, 

 a similar pattern characterizes the scapulars, median and greater wing-coverts and 

 inner secondaries. The arrangement varies according to the exposed area of the 

 feather, the green extending far up along the outer web of the greater coverts and 

 secondaries. The first trace of green appears on about the eighth secondary. The 

 next two or three outer ones, however, show considerable dark pigment. The 

 primaries and their coverts are dull dark brown. The lesser wing-coverts are 

 black. 



The gloss vanishes abruptly on the back, the zone of transition showing almost 

 no parti-coloured feathers. In place of the green and black, we find all the remaining 

 upper plumage black, thickly spotted and mottled with rufous buff. On the back this 

 is arranged in several more or less definite cross bars, sometimes quite confluent, but 

 on the rump, tail-coverts and tail-feathers, the small round spots are abundant, 

 smaller, less rufous and dotted about irregularly, with no banded arrangement visible. 

 The tail-coverts are short and differ in no way from the feathers of the rump, except 

 the longest row. These approximate the tail in size, colour and pattern, and are 

 even more highly developed as to ocelli. Each of these coverts has a pair of bluish- 

 green eye-spots, changing to rich violet, each framed by two rings, black and grey 

 respectively. There is a subterminal black band across each feather, bounded at the 

 tip by a narrow broken band of buff. The tail-feathers are twenty-four in number 

 and quite similar to the longest coverts, except that the black band near the tip fades 



