The discovery of an individual whose state of preservation leaves nothing to be desired now comes to demonstrate the correctness of Verreaux's, Bonaparte's, and Elliot's suppositions. This bird, whose tail is furnished with feathers absolutely identical with those that the museum possessed, is not a peacock, as some have asserted, nor an ordinary Argus of Malacca, nor an argus of the race that Elliot named Argus grayi, and which inhabits Borneo, but the type of a new genus of the family Phasianidæ. This Gallinacean, in fact, which Mr. Maingonnat has given up to the Museum of Natural History, has not, like the common Argus of Borneo, excessively elongated secondaries; and its tail is not formed of normal rectrices, from the middle of which spring two very long feathers, a little curved and arranged like a roof; but it consists of twelve wide plane feathers, regularly tapering, and ornamented with ocellated spots, arranged along the shaft. Its head is not bare, but is adorned behind with a tuft of thread-like feathers; and, finally, its system of coloration and the proportions of the different parts of its body are not the same as in the common argus of Borneo. There is reason, then, for placing the bird, under the name of Rheinardius ocellatus, in the family Phasianidæ, after the genus Argus which it connects, after a manner, with the pheasants properly so-called. The specific name ocellatus has belonged to it since 1871, and must be substituted for that of Rheinardi.
The bird measures more than two meters in length, three-fourths of which belong to the tail. The head, which is relatively small, appears to be larger than it really is, owing to the development of the piliform tuft on the occiput, this being capable of erection so as to form a crest 0.05 to 0.06 of a meter in height. The feathers of this crest are brown and white. The back and sides of the head are covered with downy feathers of a silky brown and silvery gray, and the front of the neck with piliform feathers of a ruddy brown. The upper part of the body is of a blackish tint and the under part of a reddish brown, the whole dotted with small white or café-au-lait spots. Analogous spots are found on the wings and tail, but on the secondaries these become elongated, and tear-like in form. On the remiges the markings are quite regularly hexagonal in shape; and on the upper coverts of the tail and on the rectrices they are accompanied with numerous ferruginous blotches, some of which are irregularly scattered over the whole surface of the vane, while others, marked in the center with a blackish spot, are disposed in series along the shaft and resemble ocelli. This similitude of marking between the rectrices and subcaudals renders the distinction between these two kinds of feathers less sharp than in many other Gallinaceans, and the more so in that two median rectrices are considerably elongated and assume exactly the aspect of tail feathers.
THE OCELLATED PHEASANT (Rheinardius ocellatus).
The true rectrices are twelve in number. They are all absolutely plane, all spread out horizontally, and they go on increasing in length from the exterior to the middle. They are quite wide at the point of insertion, increase in diameter at the middle, and afterward taper to a sharp point. Altogether they form a tail of extraordinary length and width which the bird holds slightly elevated, so as to cause it to describe a graceful curve, and the point of which touches the soil. The beak, whose upper mandible is less arched than that of the pheasants, exactly resembles that of the arguses. It is slightly inflated at the base, above the nostrils, and these latter are of an elongated-oval form. In the bird that I have before me the beak, as well as the feet and legs, is of a dark rose-color. The legs are quite long and are destitute of spurs. They terminate in front in three quite delicate toes, connected at the base by membranes, and behind in a thumb that is inserted so high that it scarcely touches the ground in walking. This magnificent bird was captured in a portion of Tonkin as yet unexplored by Europeans, in a locality named Buih-Dinh, 400 kilometers to the south of Hué.--La Nature.
THE MAIDENHAIR TREE.
The Maidenhair tree--Gingkgo biloba--of which we give an illustration, is not only one of our most ornamental deciduous trees, but one of the most interesting. Few persons would at first sight take it to be a Conifer, more especially as it is destitute of resin; nevertheless, to that group it belongs, being closely allied to the Yew, but distinguishable by its long-stalked, fan-shaped leaves, with numerous radiating veins, as in an Adiantum. These leaves, like those of the larch but unlike most Conifers, are deciduous, turning of a pale yellow color before they fall. The tree is found in Japan and in China, but generally in the neighborhood of temples or other buildings, and is, we believe, unknown in a truly wild state. As in the case of several other trees planted in like situations, such as Cupressus funebris, Abies fortunei, A. kæmpferi, Cryptomeria japonica, Sciadopitys verticillata, it is probable that the trees have been introduced from Thibet, or other unexplored districts, into China and Japan. Though now a solitary representative of its genus, the Gingkgo was well represented in the coal period, and also existed through the secondary and tertiary epochs, Professor Heer having identified kindred specimens belonging to sixty species and eight genera in fossil remains generally distributed through the northern hemisphere. Whatever inference we may draw, it is at least certain that the tree was well represented in former times, if now it be the last of its race. It was first known to Kæmpfer in 1690, and described by him in 1712, and was introduced into this country in the middle of the eighteenth century. Loudon relates a curious tale as to the manner in which a French amateur became possessed of it. The Frenchman, it appears, came to England, and paid a visit to an English nurseryman, who was the possessor of five plants, raised from Japanese seeds. The hospitable Englishman entertained the Frenchman only too well. He allowed his commercial instincts to be blunted by wine, and sold to his guest the five plants for the sum of 25 guineas. Next morning, when time for reflection came, the Englishman attempted to regain one only of the plants for the same sum that the Frenchman had given for all five, but without avail. The plants were conveyed to France, where as each plant had cost about 40 crowns, ecus, the tree got the name of arbre a quarante ecus. This is the story as given by Loudon, who tells us that Andre Thouin used to relate the fact in his lectures at the Jardin des Plantes, whether as an illustration of the perfidy of Albion is not stated.
The tree is dioecious, bearing male catkins on one plant, female on another. All the female trees in Europe are believed to have originated from a tree near Geneva, of which Auguste Pyramus de Candolle secured grafts, and distributed them throughout the Continent. Nevertheless, the female tree is rarely met with, as compared with the male; but it is quite possible that a tree which generally produces male flowers only may sometimes bear female flowers only. We have no certain evidence of this in the case of the Gingkgo, but it is a common enough occurrence in other dioecious plants, and the occurrence of a fruiting specimen near Philadelphia, as recently recorded by Mr. Meehan, may possibly be attributed to this cause.