Sir

I received your letter & wish to supply any information, as you seem to think it may be useful for the next edition of your book,—¹ it seems remarkable that unlike the pure white peafowl, which produce often pied young ones when crossed with the common,—that the black-wings never vary; whether produced from common peacocks & peahens; or from differing parents or from black-winged male & female; the young birds are precisely the same, either pure common or pure black-wing— also I have on three occasions known black-wing young ones in the same brood with common ones; always rather the smallest & weakest.— you are doubtless aware that as in pheasants, the hen peafowl sometimes, throw cock feathers, & leave off laying; this is the case with the mother of a black-wing hen I have at present; the old brown bird when I last saw her had several tail feathers like the peacocks train; & the neck also coloring; she had left off laying for a year so before this change— M^r Sclater inclines to think this variety may yet be found wild in Cochin China,² but I do not know if this has been ascertained or not.— I have at present at my house in Ireland (Rostrevor Co. Down) four old & four young black-winged peafowl— the plumage of the young cocks I consider very remarkable. hatched entirely white except the chestnut quills they get darker & darker till every vestige of white disappears; the female growing up comparatively unaltered— I remember seeing in an old painting at a public Exhibition in Piccadilly some few years ago: two black-wing cocks; they were merely as accessories to other figures in the picture, & I remember no more about the picture except that it was decidedly an old one & thus apparently the variety must have been known for many years past.³

I hope you will excuse my troubling you with all these particulars, which I should not have done, but for your last letter which encourages me to think they may not be unacceptable—

I am, Sir | Yr obed^nt Serv^t | ASG Canning

C. Darwin Esqre.