PHEASANT. 197 



tail eleven inches, making in all seventeen inches and a half, it will 

 make the length of the real subject to be six feet. 



How far this bird is allied to the Gold Pheasant is not for us to 

 say, but certainly the colours of the plumage, as well as distribu- 

 tion, will scarcely justify us in making it a distinct species; for in 

 respect to the tail and its coverts it differs very materially; being 

 wholly without the fine narrow crimson feathers, which hang down 

 over the sides of the tail from the base; besides which, instead of 

 the mottled, and variegated colours on the tail, all of them are 

 crossed with numerous black bars ; from this circumstance I have 

 an idea of this bird being the species to which the long feather 

 belongs, as first mentioned in Vol. iv. p. 710, of my Gen. Synopsis, 

 and is now figured in the plate opposite ; the general colour of this 

 feather is fine blue grey, margined on the sides with rufous cream- 

 colour, and marked on each side of the shaft with about seventy or 

 eighty curved black brown bars, which bend downwards, but do not 

 correspond with each other on both sides of the shaft; the difference, 

 however, seems to be, that in the drawing above-mentioned the bars 

 are more narrow, and numerous, and quite transverse, not curved, 

 and 120 at least on the two middle feathers; but as this drawing does 

 not seem to be executed with very great precision, it may probably 

 mean to represent the species we allude to ; and till we can obtain 

 specimens of the bird with our elegant tail feathers attached, we will 

 venture to hazard our sentiments on the subject. Some years since 

 I had the opportunity of seeing a bundle of thirty or forty of these 

 tail feathers, which were brought from China ; I found among them 

 every length from more than seven feet, to eighteen inches, but all 

 marked with similar transverse bands. 



Marco Polo, in his Travels, p. 46, observes — " There be plenty 

 " of Feysants and very greate, for 1 of them is as bigge as 2 of ours, 

 " with Tayles of eygth, 9, and tenne spannes long, from the King- 

 " dom of Erguyl or Arguill, the W. side of Tarinry." The province 



