THE ARGUS PHEASANTS. 7 fe 
of the feathers; each of these eyes yellowish in the centre, 
shading into white on the one side and reddish-brown on the 
other, and bounded by a black band; under-parts black with 
wavy bars and markings of chestnut and buff. Naked skin on 
sides of head and throat dark biue. Total length, 72 inches ; 
wing to the end of the primary quills, 19; to the end of the 
secondaries, 34; tail, 50; tarsus, 474. 
Adult Female—Neck chestnut, slightly mottled with black, 
shading into reddish-buff on the mantle, which is thickly 
mottled with black; lower back bright buff, barred and 
mottled with black ; wing-coverts and secondary quills black, 
thickly covered with buff hieroglyphics; primary quills chest- 
nut, irregularly marked with black ; under-parts rufous, finely 
mottled with black. ‘Total length, 30 inches ; wing to the end 
of the primary quills, 13 ; to the end of the secondaries, 15 ; 
balls T2°5 > tarsus, 4. 
Range-—Laos Mountains, Siam, South Tenasserim, the 
Malay Peninsula, and Sumatra. 
Habits— The late Mr. W. R. Davison, who had exceptional 
opportunities of studying the habits of the Argus Pheasant, gives 
the following excellent account :—‘“ They live quite solitarily, 
both males and females. Every male has his own drawing- 
room, of which he is excessively proud, and which he keeps 
scrupulously clean. ‘They haunt exclusively the depths of the 
evergreen forests, and each male chooses some open level spot 
—sometimes down ina dark, gloomy ravine entirely surrounded 
and shut in by dense crane-brakes and rank vegetation ; 
sometimes on the top of a hill where the jungle is com- 
paratively open—from which he clears all the dead leaves and 
weeds for a space of six or eight yards square, until nothing 
but the bare clean earth remains, and thereafter he keeps this 
place scrupulously clean, removing carefully every dead leaf or 
twig that may happen to fall on it from the trees above. 
“These cleared spaces are undoubtedly used as dancing- 
