62 BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 



leave them half ail hour and fiud them under the very bush you 

 saw them pitch in j and you may beat that bush, or cause it to be 

 beaten, till you are on the point of being convinced the bird must 

 have gone, when up it gets almost under your very nose, and shoots 

 with tremendous velocity down hill. This grand bird is, as I have 

 already stated, even now very scarce in the neighbourhood of 

 Simla, and I very much fear it will soon disappear altogether ; its 

 ways and habits laying it open to complete extinguishment more 

 than do those of other pheasants. The rest, I think, will always be 

 sufficiently able to take care of themselves, a wise Government now 

 protecting them in the breeding season, in common, I believe, with 

 all game birds of that z'egiou, I must not detain you long on the 

 subject of the three other species of pheasants I have mentioned. 

 As to the moonal, it is more easy for me to be brief, inasmuch as 

 the bird is now comparatively scarce in any easily accessible part 

 of the neighbourhood of Simla, and it is certainly by no means 

 true now, and of that locality, whatever may have been the case 

 when (i Mountaineer" wrote (so often quoted by Mr. Hume and by 

 Mr. Barucs), ' ■ that the most indifferent sportsman will fiudlittle diffi- 

 culty in gettiug the moonal."" This is because it has been and is so 

 much shot for its gorgeous plumage, a small piece of which, a lady 

 tells me, costs as much as a guinea or more at a fashionable West End 

 bonnet shop. The man I had with me this year to skin what I shot 

 told me he had himself skinned some 2,000 last season for one firm 

 of exporters in Calcutta, the majority of which, I believe, came from the 

 neighbourhood of the Char — -a hill some twenty miles (as the crow flies 

 from Simla, but somewhat rugged and inacessible and removed from 

 any good road. From what little I have seen of this bird I can quite 

 imagine that the best sport with it would begot by shooting it, as sug- 

 gested by "Mountaineer/' with a small rifle. Such a rifle as the '320 

 or *o80 bore, Winchester, which Mr. Fhipson is exhibiting here, aud 

 which I have lately had opportunity of proving to be a wonderfully 

 accurate and reliable little weapon. The bird has a habit, when first 

 flushed by dogs, of getting into a bare branch of some lofty tree, 

 and thence abusing with great loquacity the disturbers of its peace. 

 "While so engaged, yon may approach to within some £0 or 100 

 yards of it by utiug the cover of intermediate trees, aud at that 

 distance it affords a good mark for such a weapon. It is difficult to 

 approach near enough for an effective shot with a shot gun, and the 

 bird is so very wideawake (though " Mountaineer" somewhat 



