THE CHEER PHEASANTS. 3 
suitable spots, on the other side you may search fifty square 
miles of most likely-looking country and never see one. 
‘From six to seven thousand feet is the elevation at which. 
in October, they are most common, but in winter and spring 
they go lower, and some even breed lower, and in summer they 
may be met with up to at least ten thousand feet (I myself 
killed a pair of old ones late in June at fully this elevation), 
and probably higher. Of course they are birds of the outer or 
wooded hills,and when once you cross a high snowy ridge, which 
effectually arrests the clouds of the monsoon, into dry, more or 
less treeless regions, like Lahoul, Spiti, and Ladakh, you lose 
the Cheer and all the Pheasants but the Snow-Cocks. The 
former are all more or less birds of the forest, and all belong 
to the zone of abundant rainfall. 
“The best places in which to find Cheer are the Dangs, or 
precipitous places, so common in many parts of the interior ; 
not vast bare cliffs, but a whole congeries of little cliffs one 
above the other, each perhaps from fifteen to thirty feet high 
broken up by ledges, on which a man could barely walk, but 
thickly set with grass and bushes, and out of which grow up 
stunted trees, and from which hang down curious skeins of 
grey roots and mighty garlands of creepers. 
“Tf the hill above be thinly wooded, and on some plateau 
below there are a good number of Millet and Prince’s Feather 
fields, you are, in a Cheer district, next to certain in the autumn 
to find a covey on the upper ledges of such a spot, about ten 
o'clock in the morning. . . .” 
In describing their flight, he says :—‘* The force with which 
Cheer descend is almost incredible. Other Pheasants, in de- 
scending, keep the wings a little open ; these birds pass one at 
such a fearful pace that it is impossible to be certain, but it 
always appeared to me that Cheer quite closed their wings, and 
I attribute their power to do this to their enormous tails sufficing 
to guide them. When within a hundred feet (I speak by guess), 
of the level at which they intend to alight, suddenly out go the 
B 2 
