since the difference in size between an old male and a young
female is not so apparent.
The following is a resumd of the dimensions of apparently
adult birds only:—
Males.—Length, 9/25 to IO'O; expanse, i6'8 to 18*0; wing, 4/9
to 5-2 ; tail from vent, I'5 to I'8 ; tarsus, i'6g to I 83 ; bill at
front, 1-65 to 1 85 ; weight, 3-5 ozs. to 4/9 ozs.
Females.—Length, 975 to 10*89; expanse, iS'O to I9'25 ;
wing, 5-25 to 5-6 ; tail from vent, i*0to 2'0 ; tarsus, 175 to 1*96 ;
bill at front, 1*8 to 2"05 ; weight, 4*4 ozs to 6"42 ozs.
The legs and feet are generally greenish, usually a pale
yellowish green, or greenish yellow, often greyer, or duskier,
or somewhat hoary on the joints and toes ; sometimes, however,
they arc a deep olive, sometimes pale bluish overlaid with a
greenish tinge, and sometimes simply dull pale green ; the claws
are brown, sometimes paler, sometimes darker.
The irides vary from hazel to very deep brown, and have
sometimes a greenish or olive tinge.
The bill is very variable ; typically it is a pale fleshy brown
darker or purer brown towards the tip, and with a greenish tinge
towards the base ; it is subject, however, to a good deal of variation,
and I quote in illustration of this a few of my notes :—
S 2nd February—bill, reddish brown.
<? 1st December—bill, pale, rather fleshy, brownish olive, duller towards tips.
^ 4TH ,, culmen, and terminal 3*$thl pale yellowish lleshy ; sides
of basal 2-5U1S with a brownish green tinge.
•J tl pale brownish fleshy, olivaceous on basal 2-5T.l1.
$ 1st ,, ,, pale pinkish brown, deeper horny brown towards tips.
ft „ pale brown, with a slight olive tinge, darker towards tips.
J ,, ,, pale pinkish or fleshy brown, with more or less of an olive
tinge and terminal portions deeper brown.
? 21st September—bill, greenish, yellowish fleshy at tip of both mandibles.
$ loth June—bill, basal 2-51I1S greenish blue, pinkish elsewhere.
And Oatcs says of one, a male, "basal half of bill olivaceous,
the terminal half reddish brown, turning to pure brown at
the extreme tip."
THE PLATE, as a faithful record of the plumage of the species,
is excellent; only the legs are wrongly coloured, and the lores of
the right hand figure are too dark. This figure represents an
adult male, that on the left an adult female.
Schlegel and others have asserted that the plumage depicted
in the latter is that of adults of both sexes. Jerdon pointed out
that it was that of the adult female only. Then Colonel Tickell,
in writing of this species in the Field, remarked (the italics are
mine):—
11 The above descriptions disagree in many points with those
given by Jerdon ; but they are carefully worded from observation
of several fine specimens of both sexes and different ages
shot by myself in Tirhoot, Lower Bengal, and Singbhoom.
The colouring ascribed by jerdon to the adult male is that of an
immature bird of eitlier sex, and the description of his female is
that of a mature bird of either sex."
This determined me to look into the question myself, and I
shot and bought and dissected over 100 birds. Of these, nearly
fifty were in the plumage depicted in the left hand figure;
every one of these proved to be, without exception, females.
In this enormous number of birds, examined between the 1st
November and 1st April, not one single bird in this plumage
was a male.
Moreover, I found that (I speak of birds sexed by dissection)
in the females the wings varied from 5*25 to 56, and the bills
at front from i'8 to 2"05, while in the males the wings varied
from 49 to 5'2, and the bills from 1-65 to 185, and out of all the
birds examined, in what had thus been proved to be the adult
female plumage, only one single specimen, but what would have
been recognized to be a female merely by its dimensions. This
one, a female by dissection, with comparatively large eggs in
the ovary, and in the full female plumage, had a wing of only
503 and a bill at front of only 173. It was in fact a dwarf
female, a female by dissection, a female in plumage, but of
dimensions rather less than those of an average male. It has
occurred to me that similar dwarf females may have led Schlegel,
Tickell and others into the error above referred to.
One thing is certain—besides the large series of this bird
examined and sexed specially for this enquiry, I possess twentythree
specimens sexed at other times by myself and others in
the adult female plumage. Every one of these has been sexed
female by dissection. This makes seventy birds in which the
plumage, attributed by Jerdon to the adult female, has proved
on dissection to pertain to that sex, without one single instance
in which it has proved on dissection to pertain to the male.
To me this seems to prove the rule, but there may be exceptions.
It seems to me possible that, as in many species females
with diseased ovaries assume a quasi-male plumage, so in this
species, in which ordinary sexual relations are reversed, males
with diseased generative organs may assume a guasi-fcmale
plumage. I hope every one will try whether it is possible to
find a single male in the plumage depicted in the left hand figure
of the plate, and if they ever find such, examine carefully the
generative organs and preserve the specimen, so that we may see
whether in such exceptional cases the identical plumage of the
female is assumed, or only something approaching or mimicking
it.
The young of both sexes resemble the male, i.e., the plumage
depicted in the right hand figure, but the young females soon
begin to show signs of the adult plumage; they get the dark
pectoral band more strongly marked, and the wing-coverts
begin to show the green, crossed by narrow, dark, transverse bars
characteristic of the adult female garb.