Mr. Beale first succeeded in procuring a living male specimen of this elegant bird in 1808, and kept it in a healthy state for thirteen years. After its death, he endeavoured to procure others, but did not succeed until the year 1831. Four specimens were brought, from the interior of China, to Mr. Beale’s aviary, and purchased for one hundred and thirty dollars. These specimens were those, I believe, subsequently taken to England by Mr. Reeves. A female of this elegant creature has not yet been procured, although large offers have been made for one. Much difficulty has been experienced in procuring from the Chinese, female birds of the Reeves’s or golden pheasants: many think it proceeds from a desire of preventing the birds being bred; but it may more correctly be attributable to the difficulty of persuading the Chinese that the females can at all be an object of attraction, or worthy of purchase, from being deficient in the brilliant plumage of the male birds; and it is probable that they misunderstand the person who requests females to be brought, and therefore male specimens are usually brought in place of them. A drawing of this bird was sent to England, by Mr. Beale, in 1804; and on the death, before mentioned, of the first living specimen ever seen by Europeans in China, it was stuffed, and presented to a gentleman belonging to the Dutch Factory at Canton, who expressed a great desire to send it to Holland, as it would materially favour his interest at home: it was, therefore, sent thither in 1817, or 1818, and was very probably the specimen from which Temminck’s description was given. The golden, or painted pheasants, (_Phasianus pictus_,) now so well known even at home, are decked in elegant plumage: it can, however, be no compliment to their harmonious blending of colours, to call them painted, although the epithet may be considered very applicable to their general gaudy appearance. Their brilliant tints excite more admiration in vulgar minds than the delicate pencilling of the silver pheasant, or the less gaudy but more elegant tinting of plumage in the Reeves’s, or the ring-neck pheasants. The painted pheasant is called Kum, kai,[22] or Kin, kai, by the Chinese: the eggs of the bird are described as being white, with brown spots. These beautiful birds are brought from the districts of Che, Kien, and Keang, nan. The male of this bird, when courting the female, or bullying the males, conceals the purple feathers of the wings with the golden feathers of the back, at the same time bringing those feathers, seen like a hood upon the back of the neck, forward, and concealing the bill; thus, on whatever side the object of attack or courtship may be, the hood is so brought as to hide all but the sharp, bright eye. The attitudes of this, as well as of others of the pheasant tribe, are invariably graceful, whether upon the ground, or perched upon the branches of a tree.