On Male Plumage of the Hen of the Domestic Fowl. 299 



assume the plumage of cocks ; and the same change occurs 

 in hen pheasants and pea-hens, but at more indeterminate 

 periods of life, and less in connection with advanced age. 

 Dr J. A. Smith (Proc. Phys. Soc, Jan. 26, 1859) records the 

 cases of three hen pheasants exhibiting the change of plum- 

 age, and at the same meeting Captain Orde stated that he 

 had examined other specimens. 



The male characters exhibited by the bantam hen de- 

 scribed in this communication were evidently correlated 

 with the advanced age of the bird, and may be compared 

 with the assumption of a beard and a harsher tone of voice 

 not unfrequently occurring in the aged human female. The 

 atrophied condition of the ovary, and the necessary cessation 

 of ovulation, are also to be ascribed to the same cause. Pre- 

 vious writers have directed attention to the not unfrequent 

 occurrence of an atrophied or diseased condition of the 

 ovaries, or an obstructed state of the oviduct, in hen birds 

 possessing male plumage, and this not only in aged birds, 

 but in young specimens. So that the change of plumage 

 would appear, in these cases at least, to be correlated with 

 an impairment or complete stoppage of the ovarian func- 

 tions, though it should be stated that some isolated instances 

 have been recorded, as in one of the hen pheasants described 

 by Dr J. A. Smith, in which the ovaries were perfectly 

 healthy, and contained numerous ova. 



The author considered that the loose bodies found in the 

 abdominal cavity, as well as those of a similar structure 

 attached by adhesive bands to certain of the abdominal 

 viscera of the bantam hen, were aborted or degenerated ova, 

 which had not entered the ovarian duct, but had escaped 

 into the peritoneal cavity, and had either remained free, or 

 had assumed connections to adjacent viscera. A. W. Otto 

 (Seltene Beobachtungen, Breslau, 1816, p^ 137) appears to 

 have met with a body of a similar character, but of much 

 larger size, in the peritoneal cavity of a hen he examined. 

 It was invested with a false vascular membrane, and pos- 

 sessed a distinct capsule containing a yellow yelk-like sub- 

 stance. He regarded it as a degenerated ovum. 



VOL. III. 2 Q 



