232 ALLEN S NATURALISTS LIBRARY. 



bronze, and the under-parts glossed with green. A glance at 

 his figure shows that his Z. iuipeyanus was not the present 

 species, but the bird afterwards described as L. chambaiius by 

 Col. C. H. T. Marshall. 



HaMts. — Mr. Hume writes : "What is essential to this species 

 is elevation and forest. All our Pheasants ii the Himalayas 

 may, as Hodgson (I think) pointed out thirty or forty years 

 ago, be roughly divided into three classes : firstly, those of 

 the high mountains, to which belong the Moonal, the Snow- 

 Cocks, the Blood Pheasant, and the Tragopans ; secondly, 

 those of the mid-region, the Cheer, the Koklass, and the 

 various Kalij Pheasants ; and thirdly, the Jungle Fowl of the 

 lower region. 



" And you must have vegetation and forest as well as con- 

 siderable altitudes ; it would be vain to seek the Moonal in the 

 stony wildernesses of Lahoul and Spiti, or the desert steppes 

 of Ladakh. I have shot many Moonal in my time, and have 

 seen a vast number more. There are few sights more striking, 

 where birds are concerned, than that of a grand old cock 

 shooting out horizontally from the hillside just below one, 

 glittering and flashing in the golden sunlight, a gigantic rain- 

 bow-tinted gem, and then dropping stone-like, with closed 

 wings, into the abyss below." 



From the full and excellent account of this species given by 

 Mr. Frederic Wilson I extract the following. He says : — 



" The Moonal is found on almost every hill of any elevation, 

 from the first great ridge above the plains to the limits of forest, 

 and in the interior it is the most abundant of our Game-Birds. 

 When the hills near Mussooree were first visited by Europeans, 

 it was found to be common there, and a few may still be seen 

 on the same ridge eastwards from Landour. 



" In summer, when the rank vegetation which springs up in 

 the forest renders it impossible to see many yards around, few 

 are to be met with, except near the summits of the great ridges 

 jutting from the snow, where morning and evening, when they 



