sterile. _Chrysolophus pictus_, the brilliant Golden Pheasant, has the {210}crown and full recumbent hair-like crest golden, the fine erectile cape of truncated nape-plumes orange with blue-black bars, the mantle dark green and purple, the rump golden, the primaries brownish, the secondaries purplish with chestnut and black coverts, the larger tail-coverts and the vaulted tail with its two very long median rectrices black, with brown spots or stripes, the scapulars and under parts scarlet, and the cheeks and throat rufous. There are generally two spurs on each metatarsus, and the bare orbits are yellowish. The female is brown, relieved by black and buff, and has a shorter tail, no crest or cape. This bird, difficult to naturalize in Britain, but easily domesticated, inhabits wooded mountains in South and West China and East Tibet, meeting in the last two countries the equally beautiful Lady Amherst's Pheasant (_C. amherstiae_), which has dark green crown, mantle, throat, and chest, blood-red crest, white cape with blue-black bars, black and buff rump, glossy green and brown wings, white breast and abdomen, and black and white tail with scarlet and orange tips to the coverts. The orbits are blue in both sexes, the female being otherwise as in _C. pictus_. The original Pheasant of Britain–probably introduced by the Romans–was _Phasianus colchicus_, ranging from the Caspian to South-East Europe; but the Ring-necked species (_P. torquatus_) of Manchuria, East Mongolia, Corea, Tsu-sima, and Eastern China, imported towards the end of last century, has interbred with it so freely that typical examples are now exceptional. The latter form has a white collar and slaty lower back with dark green barring; while the former has the rump feathers buff, with black mottlings and purplish-red tips. The females, hardly separable from one another, lack the red face-wattles, the long ear-tufts, and the pair of spurs of the male. The above-mentioned colour of the lower back and the comparatively broad black basal tail-bands, are the distinguishing points of a section, which comprises _P. torquatus_, _P. elegans_ of West China, _P. vlangali_ of Tsaidam, _P. strauchi_ of Kansu, _P. decollatus_ of Western and Central China, _P. satscheunensis_ of Sa-tscheu, _P. formosanus_ of Formosa, and _P. versicolor_ of Japan. Another section, more akin to _P. colchicus_, contains _P. tarimensis_ and _P. zerafshanicus_ of the Tarim and Zerafshan Valleys, _P. persicus_ of Persia and Transcaspia, _P. principalis_ of North-East Persia and North-West Afghanistan, _P. shawi_ of East Turkestan, _P. chrysomelas_ of the Amu-Darya, and {211}_P. mongolicus_, extending from the Syr-Daria to Mongolia. All these races have the crown greenish, and differ chiefly in the colour of the scapulars, breast, rump, and abdomen; a white collar occurring in _P. torquatus_, _P. mongolicus_, _P. satscheunensis_, and _P. formosanus_, while _P. versicolor_ is green below.