60 BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 



evidently a near relation, being a typical pheasant in all respects, 

 save that he is wanting in the long tail feathers. But the mooual, 

 with his gorgeous blue, green, copper, and bronze tints, his peculiar 

 upright crest, and his compact thickset body, and strong, short legs, 

 evidently adapted for digging, is obviously as nearly related to the 

 peacocks as he is to the pheasants; while you have only to look at 

 the tail of the kalij to see his relationship to the next sub-family at 

 the other end of the scale, viz., the gallinrc— comprising the jungle 

 fowls, tirebacks, &c. All four birds seem distinctly to prefer shade 

 to sun and clamp to dryness. The neighbourhood of running water 

 seems almost an essential with all of them. In short, such as the 

 fern is in its choice of locality, so is the pheasant ; the two aro 

 evidently firm friends. As with trout and many other fish you are 

 pretty sure to take day after day behind the same stone or in the 

 same eddy, so it was I found, not always for any apparent reason 

 with these pheasants. There w r ere certain spots, for instance, on 

 the road from Narcanda to Bhagi (which, by the way, passes 

 through one of the grandest pieces of forest scenery I suppose to be 

 seen on any roadside in the world, where the deodars must some of 

 them be quite 200 ft. high, with their dark sombre green veiled in 

 many cases from top to bottom in the flame-coloured leaves of the 

 Virginia creeper). There were certain spots on this road, where in 

 my visit of three years ago I was sure day after day to find a bird or 

 two in spite of the fate that had overtaken their predecessors at the 

 same spot it might be only the previous day. On visiting the same 

 locality last November, there, in the very same spots, I nearly 

 always found birds. The mooual, the koklass, and the kalij seem 

 to spread themselves pretty indiscriminately over the area where 

 the conditions they require aro to be found. It seems curiously 

 otherwise with the cheer. One little valley may hold cheer, and a 

 dozen all round, where apparently the conditions are precisely the 

 same, may not hold a single one. I have heard of residents of Simla 

 shooting regularly for years together all round the neighbourhood, 

 and never so much as seeing a single cheer, and then subsequently 

 coming on them by chance one day in some place not previously 

 shot over though perhaps quite close to Simla and always thereafter 

 finding them in the same place year after year. I was fortunate 

 enough on this last visit to Simla to be shown one of these 

 haunts of the cheer, from which these three specimens I have 

 here were secured. The ground corresponded very accurately 



