The Argus Pheasant 121 



in the morning and evening, the male Argus Pheasants 

 were always to be found at home, and they roost in the 

 trees close to their clearing. They are remarkably shy 

 birds, inhabiting the depths of the dense evergreen forests, 

 and are most difficult of approach, as they dive into the 

 impenetrable thickets on the first suspicion of danger, and 

 never fly if they can escape by running, even when pursued 

 by a dog. Even if the hunter manages to approach the 

 playing-ground so stealthily that only a few yards separate 

 him from the calling bird, the latter has always disappeared 

 when at last he is able to see into the clearing through the 

 dense intervening foliage. It is therefore impossible to 

 shoot the birds, but they are somewhat easily trapped, 

 when once their playing-ground is discovered. 



Thus Mr. Davison himself used to catch them by build- 

 ing a hedge of cut scrub round the playing-ground, and 

 leaving four openings for the bird to enter by, each 

 furnished with a running noose attached to a bent sapling, 

 but the Malays take advantage of the idiosyncracy of the 

 Argus to keep its clearing scrupulously clean, and act 

 accordingly. " A bit of bamboo, about eighteen or twenty 

 inches long and a quarter of an inch wide, is shaved down 

 till it is of the thickness of writing-paper, the edges being 

 as sharp as a razor. This narrow pliant piece ends in a 

 stout sort of handle at one end, six or eight inches long, 

 which is driven firmly into the ground in the middle of the 

 cleared space. The bird, in trying to remove it, scratches 

 and pecks at it, endeavouring to dig it up, but finding all 

 its efforts vain, it twists the narrow pliant portion several 

 times round its neck and takes hold of the bamboo near the 

 ground with its bill, then giving a sudden spring backwards to 

 try to pull it up. The consequence is that its head is nearly 

 severed from its body by the razor-like edges of the bamboo. 



" Another method is to erect two small posts, about four 

 feet high and three feet apart, in the clearings, across the 



