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Show 1 9 0 3 .] JAPANESE LONG-TAILED FOWLS. 2 3 5 Sept. 19th. Age 3 months 1 week.-Condition of plumage :- Cock A. Breast, thighs, and belly all black. Neck-hackles very light grey, with thin dark stripe down the centre of each feather. Back with some steel-blue feathers behind the hackles, the rest red. Saddle-hackles developing, yellow, long and thin. Nearly all the rectrices and tail-coverts growing with long sheaths, colour steel-blue. Cock B. Nearly the same as A, but not quite so far advanced. Cock C. Much less advanced, white on sides of breast, speckled brown feathers mixed with red of back, only the outermost rectrices showing sheaths. Cock D. Very little white on breast, hackles of neck steel-blue, back black with a little red at tips of feathers. Saddle whitish. Rectrices 7 pairs, only the central and outermost pairs with sheaths, the rest apparently not yet moulted. Hens. Breasts almost white, the sides of breast buff; neck-hackles dark, with whitish stripes down centres of feathers. Back and tail greyish brown, speckled, i. e. with white quills. Two hens with black heads, one with head lighter, grey and speckled. I now decided to stroke and pull the tail-feathers in Cock B and to leave Cock A untouched, to see if any difference would result. These two, as I have said, were closely similar except that A was the larger, finer bird and slightly more advanced in development. I chose, therefore, the one which was congenitally inferior, so that if any superiority in growth of feather appeared in it, it could only be due to the artificial treatment. In both there were seven pairs of rectrices, the central pair slender and curved, the rest broad and straight. The outermost pair had not yet been moulted. I fixed up a sort of cage with a round perch at the bottom, and put Cock B into it while I stroked his feathers, but did not keep him in it. Oct. ls£.- Found that the hens had shed most of their rectrices and were producing new feathers, as well as new tail-coverts, but without change of colour. Oct. 7th.-The upper tail-covert in Cock A measured 25 cm. or about 10 inches, not including the basal sheath. At this time I changed my residence, and the fowls were installed in a place divided into two runs; into one I put Cocks B, C, and D, in the other Cock A with the three hens. On Oct. 12th Cock A crowed for the first time, another proof that he was a little more precocious than the others. Oct. 16th. Age 4 months 3 days.-Longest feather, a tail-covert on left side, in Cock B 27 cm., about the same as the longest in Cock A. Oct. 27th. Age 4 months 2 weeks.-Tried tying the cocks by one leg on ordinary perches about 3 feet from the ground, and thus was able to measure the feathers better. |