894 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXVI, 



few white specks ; chin and throat thinly covered with mottled 

 white and brown feathers ; lower throat and upper breast as in the 

 adult male ; lower breast and under plumage like that of the female, 

 but with many feathers having their centres more or less grey ; 

 the upper plumage is like that of the female, but darker and more 

 boldly speckled, many of the feathers of the scapulars and inter- 

 scapulars, having dull chestnut-brown eyes and similar ej'es scattered 

 here and there over the whole of the upper surface. 



Irides dai'k brown ; legs dull reddish, the rudimentary spurs 

 paler ; gular skin dull orange, showing through the feathers ; round 

 the lids of the eye livid, and livid fleshy above the eye ; bill horny, 

 culmen darker, and base and commissure pale and rather fleshy. 



Bistrilmtion. — This fine Tragopan is found throughout the hills 

 South of the Brahmapootra, extending from the Barail Eange in 

 North Cachar and the Naga Hills Eastwards throughout the 

 Patkoi Ran2:e into North- West Burma and South-Eastwards 

 through Manipur into the Chin Hills, where it is comparatively 

 common in certain suitable places. It is restricted to elevations 

 between 5,000 feet and 9,000 feet. 



The specimen obtained by Dr. Oran from the Dapla Hills was 

 undou.btedly the Northern race of this species, which probably 

 connects geographical!}^ with the Southern form somewhere in the 

 hills to the East of Sadiya, Beebe's distribution map of the 

 Tragopans does not give this species sufficient range to the North 

 and East. 



NidificaHon. — There is practically nothing on record about the 

 breeding of this Tragopan beyond what is contained in the notes 

 furnished by me to Beebe. 



The Breeding Season commences in early April and lasts 

 through May, but probably all chicks have hatched off before June ; 

 they are thus, as might be expected from the fact of their lower 

 habitat, earlier breeders than the other Tragopans. The A.ngami 

 Nagas, who know these birds well, assure me that they always lay 

 their eggs in nests in trees, stumps, or even dense thick bushes, but 

 never actually on the ground. Most often the nests are placed at a 

 height of 6 to 10 feet from the ground, but more rarely as high as 

 20 or 25 feet. According to most Nagas, the birds build the whole 

 nest themselves, but one of my informants, shrewder than the rest, 

 said that the birds usurped other birds' nests and then finished 

 them off according to their own taste with additional sticks, twigs, 

 leaves and grass. This man also told me that he had taken a nest 

 which was merely a platform of sticks and twigs placed on the top 

 of a mass of leaves and vegetable rubbish collected in the creepers 

 covering an old tree. 



Certainly my own birds in captivity made determined efforts to 

 lay their eggs on their perches in the aviaries, a feat of balancing 



