120 Recent Literature. [j^ 



Bernardsville, N. J., one of the Board of Managers of the New York 

 Zoological Society, who suggested the undertaking and who has liberally 

 supported both the necessary explorations and the subsequent publica- 

 tion, and his hope, as set forth in the preface by Dr. Henry Fairfield 

 Osborn, of producing "a work which, from the standpoint of truth, of 

 beauty and of thoroughness, should be worthy of the important place 

 which the pheasants occupy in the science of ornithology," has been 

 abundantly realized. 



Many of the members of the American Ornithologists' Union remember 

 hearing Capt. Beebe discuss his proposed Asiatic journey for the study of 

 pheasants, at the meeting in New York, in the autumn of 1909, and two 

 years later, at the Philadelphia meeting, they enjoyed his splendid photo- 

 graphs of the various countries through which he had travelled in the 

 meantime — Ceylon, India, Burma, China, Japan, the Malay States, 

 Borneo and Java — visiting the haunts of one or more species of each of 

 the nineteen recognized genera of Pheasants. Now it is our privilege to 

 share the knowledge that he has gained of these wonderful birds and to 

 read and discuss the conclusions to which his studies of the group have led. 



The present volume, the first of four, comprises the Blood Partridges 

 (Ithagenis) of which six species and two additional subspecies are recog- 

 nized; the Tragopans (Tragopan) with five species and one subspecies; 

 the Impeyan Pheasants (Lophophorus) and the Eared Pheasants (Crossop- 

 tilori) each with three species. All of the species are figured in colors with 

 the exception of two of the Blood Partridges which are very close to other 

 figured forms. Under each genus there is a generic diagnosis with syno- 

 nymy and a key to the species and subspecies, as well as a map showing 

 their distribution. Under the species there is, whenever possible, an 

 account of the bird from the author's personal experience with it in the 

 field, written in Capt. Beebe's well known attractive style. This is fol- 

 lowed by sections headed 'General Distribution'; 'General Account' 

 (of habits, etc.); 'Early History'; ' Captivity ' and 'Detailed Description.' 

 Under one or other of these headings the author has collected all the 

 available published information on the species, together with a vast amount 

 of original matter derived not only from his explorations in the native 

 haunts of the birds, but from his long experience with many of them in 

 captivity and his studies of the material preserved in all the important 

 museums of the world. The beautiful photogravures of the haunts of the 

 various species, from photographs by the author, are so arranged as to 

 exhibit on one plate a general view of the habitat, together with a near 

 view showing the details of the environment. There is also an admirable 

 device of printing on the thin interleaf of each plate a couple of terse 

 paragraphs explaining just what it represents, calling attention to some 

 peculiar pose or action of the bird, or some important feature of the land- 

 scape, which adds greatly to the value of the illustration and to the reader's 

 appreciation of it. We do not mean to intimate that the plates do not 



