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Show 290 PEACOCK. CHAP. VIII. attended to the colour of ther. r gos1 i.l lgs, that they might ~o know which to preserve and select for breeding. THE PEACOCK. THIS is another b.u d whi.C h has h ar· ell Y v aried under domesti- . . b · 1 ·t or piebald. Mr. Water-cation, except ill somettmes eillg w 11 e . f h 'ld house caref· ully compared,. as h e m· £o rm s me ' skm.s o t. e WI Indian and domestic bird, and they were identical m ~~ery respect, except that the plumage of the l~tter wa~ per laps rather t hI.C ] \ :er. Wl1 e tl1 er our bu:· ds are descended from those introduced into Europe in the time of Alexander, or have been subsequently I. mported, 1. s d ou btfu 1 · They do not breed. very · freely w.i th us, and are se ldo m k ep t i·l l la. rOo' e numbers ' -circum. - stances w h1. c h wou ld great ly 1· nterfere with the gradual selectwn and formation of new breeds. There is one stranO'e fact with respect to the peacock, namely, 0 the occasional appearance m• E'n g1 a n d of tho " J. apanned " or "black-shouldered" kind. This form has lately be~n n~med on the high authority of Mr. Sclater as a distinct specws, VIZ • . Pa~o nigripennis, which he believes will her~a~ter be !ound Wild m some country, but not in India, where It 1s certamly unknown. These japanned birds differ conspicuousl.y from the comm~n peacock in the colour of ~heir secondary wmg-feathers, scapula1s, wing-coverts, and thighs; the females are .mucl: paler, and the young, as I hear from Mr. Bartlett, likewise dtffer. They can be propagated perfectly true. Although they do no~ resemble the hybrids which have been raised between ~· cnstat~ a~d rnuticus, nevertheless they are in some respects ~ntermedtate m character between these two species ; and th1s fact favours, as Mr. Sclater believes, the view that they form a distinct and natural species.33 • On the other hand, Sir R. Heron state's 34 that this breed sud-denly appeared within his memory in Lord Brownlow's la~·ge stock of pied, white, and common peacocks. The .same tbmg occurred in Sir J. Trevelyan's flock composed entirely of the 33 Mr. Sclatcr on the black-shouldered peacock of Latham, ' Proc. Zoolog. Soc.,' April 24th, 1860. 34 'Proc. Zoolog. Soc.,' April 14th, 1835. •CHAP. VIII. PEACOCK. 291 common kind, and in J\fr. Thornton's stock of common and pied peacocks. It is remarkable that in these two latter instances the black-shouldered kind increased, "to the extinction of the previously existing breed." I have also received through Mr. Sclater a statement from Mr. Hudson Gurney that he reared many years ago a pair of black-shouldered peacocks from the common kind; and another ornithologist, Prof. A. Newton, states that, five or six years ago, a female bird, in all respects similar to the female of the black-shouldered kind, was produced from a stock of common peacocks in his possession, which during more than twenty years had not been crossed with birds of any other strain. Hero we have five distinct cases of japanned birds sudden] y appearing in flocks of the common kind kept in England. Better evidence of the first appearance of a ne'vv variety could hardly be desired. If we reject this evidence, and believe that the japanned peacock is a distinct species, we must suppose in all these cases that the common breed had at some former period been crossed with the supposed P. nigripenni8, but had lost every trace of the cross, yet that the birds occasionally produced offspring which suddenly and completely reacquired through reversion the characters of P. nigripennis. I have heard of no other such case in the animal or vegetable kingdom. To perceive the full improbability of such an occurrence, we may suppose that a breed of dogs had been crossed at some former period with a wolf, but had lost every trace of the wolf:.like character, yet that the breed gave birth in five instances in the same country, within no great length of time, to a wolf perfect in every character; and we must further suppose that in two of the cases the newly produced wolves afterwards spontaneously :increased to such an extent as to lead to the extinction of the parent-breed of dogs. So remarkable .a form as the P. nigri. Pennis, when first imported, would have realized a large price; it is therefore improbable that it should have been silently introduced and its history subsequently lost. On the whole the evidence seems to me, as it did to Sir R. Heron, to preponderate strongly in favour of the black-shouldered breed being a variation, induced either by the climate of England, or by some unknown cause, such as reversion to a primordial and extinct .condition of the species. On the view that the black-shouldered u 2 |