PUCHERAN'S TUFTED GUINEA FOWL (_Guttera Pucheranii_) is of a beautiful
but unusually dark blue on the back and under side, and covered with very
small round or oval spots, which merge into stripes on the feathers of the
upper wing-covers; the primary quills are of almost unspotted brownish
grey, and the exterior secondaries broadly edged with white on the outer
web. The crest is pale velvety black, the summit of the head and bare fore
parts of the neck are bright red, with the folds of the skin dark greyish
violet; the eye is deep brown, the beak greyish yellow with blueish base,
and the foot almost black. This species is a native of South-eastern
Africa.
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The GUINEA FOWLS (_Numida_) form a group distinguishable by a horn-like
crest on the crown of the head, and two fleshy lappets that depend from
the lower mandible. Near Fuentes, in St. Jago, the chief of the Cape Verde
Islands, Darwin met with these beautiful birds in large flocks. They were
extremely wary, and could not be approached, running away like Partridges
on a rainy day, with their heads cocked up, and if pursued readily took
wing. "The discovery of a nest of wild Guinea Fowl," says that writer,
"was an incident that enlivened a peculiarly toilsome part of the journey,
the passage through a long but narrow watercourse, now dry, filled with
masses of loose slippery stone, almost impassable for a horse. In the
midst of a thick tuft of grass, within a wood, beside this rocky path, a
Guinea Hen had deposited her brood of twenty eggs."
Ellis, in his "Three Visits to Madagascar," says, "Among the companions of
my journey was an officer, attended by a slave carrying in a neatly-made
wicker cage a pair of perfectly white Guinea Fowls, as a great rarity,
and a present from the chief of a distant province to the prince." In
reference to this statement, Hartlaub tells us that he considers the
Guinea Fowls of Madagascar to be specifically different from such as are
natives of Africa.