. Animals in menageries. a stripe of very short dusky feathersbeneath each eye ; the plumage, also, is duller, and thebreast is remarkable by being considerably spotted: theblack bars on the tail are much more conspicuous inthis than in the male sex. The ring-necked pheasant, so common in aviaries, always of a hybrid race, produced between this andthe common species: it unites, in a greater or a less de-gree, the characters of both ; but the white ring is alwaysmuch narrower than in the pure species, and is frequentlyalmost obliterated. The Golden pictus, Su\ ( F
. Animals in menageries. a stripe of very short dusky feathersbeneath each eye ; the plumage, also, is duller, and thebreast is remarkable by being considerably spotted: theblack bars on the tail are much more conspicuous inthis than in the male sex. The ring-necked pheasant, so common in aviaries, always of a hybrid race, produced between this andthe common species: it unites, in a greater or a less de-gree, the characters of both ; but the white ring is alwaysmuch narrower than in the pure species, and is frequentlyalmost obliterated. The Golden pictus, Su\ ( Fiff. 25.)Phasianus pictus, Livn. Nycthemorus pictus, Class, of Birds,ii. p. 341. Painted Pheasant, Edwards, pi. 6S, 69. The species of this subgenus of pheasants are dis-tinguished from those of PhnManua, by the head beingmore or less naked, and, in the males, possessing either afleshy or a feathered crest; thus forming a link of con- 174 ANIMALS IN MENAGERIES. nexioii between the common pheasants and the This is one of the most magnificent as well as themost common species seen in our aviaries, where it hasbeen long since introduced from the East: in a wild stateit is chiefly found in China. Although it is well knownto breed in this country, this is attended with muchdifficulty, and requires great care and attention.* Ac-cording to the opinion of M. Temminck, this difficultypartially originates in the close confinement in whichthese birds are usually kept, and in the very precautionsthat are taken to preserve them from the effects of advises that they should be gradually habituated,like the common pheasant, to the large preserves inwhich the latter are kept: the experiment, he assures us,has already been made in Germany, where they havebeen kept at perfect liberty in an open pheasantry, incompany with the common species, and suffered nogreater inconvenience than the latter from the change ofthe seasons. This experiment is well Avorth trying inthis count
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Keywords: ., bookauthorrichmondch, bookcentury1800, booksubjectanimalbehavior
