ch it would be a
noble addition, being perhaps exceeded by nothing in nature for
refulgence.

In the same regions are found the Polyplectrons, or Pheasant Peacocks,
birds of the same family. Look at one of these in detail, the Crested
Polyplectron of the Sunda Isles. It much resembles a peacock in contour,
the head and neck black, with steely reflections, relieved by a long
stripe of white arching over each eye, and a broad patch of the same on
the ears. The forehead and crown carry a crest of tall feathers capable
of erection, and making a fine ornament. The whole under parts are
velvet black; the back and rump warm brown, with paler wavy bands and
lines. The coverts and secondary feathers of the wings are of the
richest blue, each feather tipped with velvety black. But the tail is
the grand display. It is a true tail, not a train of superincumbent
feathers as in the peacock, the quill-feathers being of great length and
breadth, and the whole capable of being widely expanded into an enormous
rounded fan. The individual feathers are brown, pencilled and sprinkled
with pale buff,--a pretty ground, on each of which is painted two large
oval eye-spots of the most brilliant metallic blue or green, according
to the light, contained within encircling double rings of black and
white. These refulgent eyes are so set that they constitute two curved
bands placed at some distance apart, running across the tail, and when
this organ is expanded they impart to it a most regal appearance.

Last, but not least, in this distinguished tribe, there is the familiar
Peacock, a proverb of splendour in raiment from the remote antiquity of
Aristophanes and Aristotle to Mr Hollingshead, who lashes the sumptuary
tendencies of our modern ladies under the title of "Peacockism."[211]
The true Peacock, however, the genuine bird, may at least plead that no
milliners' bills of L3000 are ever proved against him in Bankruptcy
Courts.

I am not going to be so impertinent as to describe in detail the plumage
of a bird so well known as the Peacock. Who does not know his empurpled
neck so elegantly bridled, his aigrette of four-and-twenty
battledore-feathers, his pencilled body-clothing, and, above all, his
grand erectile train with its rows of eyelets? Who has not admired the
lustre and beauty of those eyelets,--the kidney-like nucleus of deepest
purple, the surrounding band of green, widening in front and filling the
notch of the pupil, the broad circl