From Edward Blyth 20 July 1868
7 Princess Terrace, | Regent’s Pk,
July 20/68—
Dear Mr. Darwin,
The following quotation from the Ibis for this month will interest you, & probably you have not yet heard of the discovery of Pavo nigripennis, Sclater, in Cochin China—1 Swinhoe writes—“In the aviary of the Prefect of Hainan I saw Sclater’s peafowl (Pavo nigripennis), which the Prefect assured me came from Annam or Cochin China (proper).2 There is a pair of the same species at this moment in a bird shop here” (Hong Kong); “and I now believe P. nigripennis to be the species known as the ‘bird of Confucius’, the train feathers of which are worn in mandarin’s hats as tokens of merit. Chinese works state that the peacock occurs in the west of China, bordering Cochin China”.3
I wish he had mentioned how the Chinese pea-hen is coloured, for that whitish colouring of the hen of P. nigripennis here is very remarkable, and unlike that of a wild bird—
Yours very truly, | E. Blyth
Ibis, July, 1868, p. 353.
CD annotations
Footnotes
Bibliography
Birds of the world: Handbook of the birds of the world. By Josep del Hoyo et al. 17 vols. Barcelona: Lynx editions. 1991–2013.
Bretschneider, E. 1875. Notes on Chinese mediæval travellers to the West. Shanghai: American Presbyterian Mission Press. London: Trübner & Co.
EB: The Encyclopædia Britannica. A dictionary of arts, sciences, literature and general information. 11th edition. 29 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1910–11.
Summary
Reports on newly discovered Sclater’s pea-fowl from Cochin China.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-6281
- From
- Edward Blyth
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- London, Princess Terrace, 7
- Source of text
- DAR 160: 218
- Physical description
- ALS 3pp †
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 6281,” accessed on 18 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-6281.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 16