412 Mr. D. G. Elliot on Phasianns ignitns. 
form, presented by Mr. J. E. Beeves, and stated on the stand 
to have been brought from China I Before giving a de¬ 
scription of the plumage of this example, it will be as well, 
perhaps, to recall what is published by Latham of this bird 
in his ^ Index Ornithologicus,^ Suppl. p. Ixi (1801). It is 
as follows :— 
Phasianus IGNITUS. Pli. niger chalybeo-nitens, lateribus 
corporis rufis, dorso imo igneo-ferrugineo, rectricibus inter- 
mediis subfulvis. Habitat in Java?^^ &c. 
The first impression received on looking at the British- 
Museum specimen was, that, so far as the flanks and belly 
were concerned (the chief points of specific difference), it 
was not in perfect plumage; and I regret that more examples 
are not available for comparison. The feathers of these 
parts exhibit an uncertain, irregular, and in some places, I 
may say, an abnormal style of coloration, that gave rise 
at once to the belief that either the bird was passing 
through a transformation incidental to a change of plumage 
towards the fully adult state, or else to a suspicion, growing 
stronger as the examination proceeded, that it belonged to a 
hybrid. On both sides of the breast, below the dark blue, 
are numerous chestnut feathers whose centres and tips are 
more or less streaked with white, a hue that cannot surely 
be considered as proper in that place, although it may be an 
unsuccessful effort to portray the white central streaks of the 
flank-feathers observed in the bird I designate in my Pha- 
sianidse^^ as P. ignitus; a bird which, perhaps, was possibly 
one of its progenitors. The feathers of the abdomen, with the 
exception of those exactly in the middle, are chestnut, tipped 
or margined with black in a most irregular way, sometimes 
the apical portion of a feather being chestnut and all the 
rest black. 1 judge from this that these feathers are in the 
process of change to an entirely chestnut hue, possibly like 
those of P. nobilis. Two specimens of this last, adult males 
from Borneo, are also in the collection, both of which have 
the centre of the abdomen black, and the base of the chestnut 
feathers also of that hue, which is occasionally perceptible 
through that chestnut colour; and therefore there is nothing 
