Descriptions of British Diptera. 453 
mottled at their extremities. These present a singular reverse to the 
longest tail feathers of the pheasant, in which the bars become 
broader as they approach the end, but in this bird altogether disap- 
pear there. Some of the feathers on the wing-coverts have the 
shaft cream-coloured, with the centre black, ending in a point 
towards the tip, as in the pheasant ; but the cream-coloured band 
surrounding it in that bird is wanting, and the extremity of the 
feather is mottled. The lower part of the back and rump has a 
blending in about equal quantity of black and mottled plumage, 
each feather terminating in claret colour. The only white in the 
plumage is a spot on the shoulders similar to that exhibited by both 
sexes of the black grouse, and a few of the vent feathers partially 
displaying it. Under tail- coverts black, mottled with rich reddish- 
brown at their tips. Bill intermediate between the greenish-horny 
colour of the pheasant and the black of the Tetrao tetrix. Tarsi 
and toes also intermediate. 
Mr Sabine and Mr Eyton describe their hybrids as bred between 
the cock pheasant and grey-hen, but that the produce is as likely 
to occur from the opposite sexes of these species, is indicated by 
the following circumstance : A black-cock, a few years since, in 
the possession of my friend, William Sinclaire, Esq. of Belfast, 
having been kept along with a cock and two hen pheasants, beat and 
drove away the cock whenever he approached the hens in spring, and, 
as a brood of pheasants was wanted, had to be removed to another en- 
closure. This black-cock at the same time displayed towards these 
hen pheasants all the attitudes by which, in a wild state, the atten- 
tion of the females of his own species is attracted, and his love-call, 
so loud as to be heard at a great distance, was almost incessantly 
uttered. He was a bird of the previous year, taken in autumn by 
John Sinclaire, Esq. on his shooting-grounds in Ayrshire, after hav- 
ing been { ' put in" by one of his trained peregrine falcons. 
VIII. Characters and Descriptions of the Dipterous Insects indige- 
nous to Britain. By JAMBS DUNCAN, M. W. S., &c. &c. (Con- 
tinued from p. 368.) 
GENUS CHRYSOPS, Meig. 
ANTENNJS longer than the head, projecting horizontally, some- 
what curved upwards at the tip ; three-jointed, the two lowest joints 
NO. v. G s 
