My dear Sir,

I have been so much on the move lately, in various parts of the country, that I have allowed your note of the 22^d. July to remain thus long unanswered.¹ Need I say that I shall have pleasure in replying to the utmost of my ability to as many of your queries as I can? I am very sorry to learn that you have been so unwell, & trust that you will derive benefit from your stay at Freshwater, a place that I have not seen for the last 30 years or thereabouts.² But of course I remember it well, & have still pleasurable reminiscences of the pedestrian tour which I made at that time all round and about the Isle of Wight. I, too, should like to have more definite information respecting Swinhoe’s Chinese black-shouldered peacock, especially as to whether the females are albescent.³ Your instance of an albescent male moulting into the nigripennis plumage is interesting, but one must remember that there is constantly an interchange of eggs going on amongst the proprietors of peafowl. By last No. of Land & Water you will have learned that one peafowl (i.e. the Ceylon one) has already gone wild in Australia.⁴

I have a very interesting fact to communicate respecting the long-lost crested turkey, the breed of which would appear to have been maintained up to the present time in Abyssinia! Bartlett has a fine cock-bird, exactly as Albin figures it, even to the peculiar buff colouring as described by him.⁵ As in other instances the greys and buffs of his figures have darkened considerably, from the oxygenation of the pigment employed; & I remark the same in Edwards’s “History of Birds”. Thus Edwards’s figure upon which Turdus canorus, Linn, is founded, has become so altered in colouring that the bird could not be recognised from it, but his description applies correctly to the common Bengal Malacocercus represented by him.⁶ Another very remarkable circumstance is that the spurs are quite rudimentary in Bartlett’s bird, conforming this to Albin’s description. Bartlett has had a figure taken of it, for publication in Land & Water, with some remarks by himself.⁷ It is a remarkably fine large bird, estimated by him to weigh about 25 lbs. Its “copple”, as Albin styles it,⁸ is very amply developed. Among good instances of wild birds varying locally, you might cite the numerous geographical slight race of Perdix or Caccabis saxatilis, as græca, chukar, &c, about which consult Tristram in Ibis.⁹ Bartlett long ago told me that he could always readily distinguish Dutch examples of Perdix cinerea ¹⁰ in the London markets.

In part IV just out of Andrew Murray’s ‘Journal of Travel & Nat. Hist., in a review by himself of Chapman’s ‘Travels in S. Africa’, he has propounded the heresy of suspecting the wild Gallus bankiva to be an “offshoot” from the domestic fowl!¹¹ Just as well allege that the ⁠⟨⁠m⁠⟩⁠allard is derived from the domestic duck, or wild Col. livia from the domestic pigeon! I will handle this subject in a forthcoming No. of L. & W. ¹² You would be exceedingly gratified if you could manage, on your return home, to go round by way of Salisbury, and there visit the superb Blackmore Museum.¹³ I was again there about a fortnight ago & Saturday I spent the day with D^r. Thomson¹⁴ at Kew, & he seems to have appreciated it thoroughly. I never before had the pleasure of going over Kew Gardens with a first-rate botanist. Grass there very much burnt up, & various plants invading it conspicuously, shewing what would be the result of a series of hot summers like the present one, in modifying the flora of this country. I never felt the heat more in India than I have done here, for want, of course, of the manifold appliances for mitigating the high temperature, which long experience has brought into use in India.

Yours very Sincerely, | E. Blyth