196 PHEASANT. 



11— BARRED-TAIL PHEASANT. 



Phasianus superbus, Faisan superbe, Temm. Pig. Sf Gall. 8vo. ii. 336? 



IF we may judge from the relative proportions between the body 

 and tail of this bird, it should seem to be bigger than the Gold 

 Pheasant. The bill is rather more elongated than in that bird, and 

 red ; just round the eye bare; from the bill a black streak passes 

 through the eye, and behind it; whole head, and part of the neck, 

 yellow; the feathers of the nape elongated into a pointed crest; 

 those at the back of the neck ferruginous, crossed with numerous 

 black lines; the lower part of the neck, and beginning of the back 

 green, the feathers waved on the margins with deep brown, or black ; 

 the rest of the back and rump yellow, and dotted with the same in 

 the middle of each feather; all the under parts, from throat to vent, 

 yellowish rufous, the feathers margined with dusky ; wing coverts 

 rufous, the lower series crossed with dusky bars; second quills blue, 

 marked with bars of dusky ; greater quills deep blue black ; the tail 

 is pale rufous, of a great length, and cuneiform; the two middle 

 feathers of double the length of any of the others, the outmost very 

 short ; all of them pointed at the ends, and crossed with numerous 

 bars of dusky on the two middle ones, the others in proportion ; the 

 thighs are blue ; legs dusky, and not furnished with spurs. 



I met with a figure of the above among the drawings of Sir J. 

 Anstruther, which says, — it inhabits China, called the Golden 

 Pheasant, and found in the Surinagur Hills; but from the writing 

 beneath it, in the Persian language, it is said that the name is 

 Doom durauz (Long-tail), and found in the snowy mountains of 

 Surinagur; that the drawing is a quarter of the natural size, and 

 the weight of the bird half a sare :* hence, as the length of the bird 

 in the drawing, from bill to rump, is six inches and a half, and the 



* A sare is about two pounds, though not exactly the same every where. 



