KALLEEGE PHEASANTS. 4*7 



Baloo Mar was not long in reaching the dead buck and 

 bringing him up. He now proposed that, as it was getting 

 late in the morning for the animals to be out feeding, we 

 should return by a different way to the one we had come up, 

 and on which there might yet be a chance of finding more 

 game. After lightening it of its paunch, he shouldered our 

 prize, and, notwithstanding his load, set off as fast as the 

 rough ground would admit of, stopping now and again to rest, 

 and to take a look round about for any sign of game. We 

 had not gone very far before we started another gooral from 

 where it lay reposing among the crags, after its morning feed. 

 A whistle caused it to stop, as a startled beast often will do for 

 a few seconds, to listen and look back on hearing any sudden 

 and unusual sound behind it. Off it went again, but this time 

 hard hit, and, as is the wont of animals of the wild-goat kind 

 when wounded, took to some very bad ground, where it lay 

 down. We did not attempt to follow it, for my guide wisely 

 remarked that if we disturbed it again then, we might never 

 get it ; whereas if we let it alone, he would return to look for 

 it in the afternoon, by which time it might be less inclined to 

 move, when there would be more certainty of securing it. 

 We therefore took a bee-line for camp down through the 

 thick forest of oak and rhododendron that usually covers the 

 northern slopes of the middle and outer ranges. 



The evening was devoted to beating up some patches of 

 cover in the vicinity of the terraced fields J near our camp, 

 where I bagged a brace of Kalleege pheasants. The Kalleege 

 is common in most parts of the Himalayas. The cock is 

 black, with grey hackles and crest, and the hen brown. As 

 several varieties of this bird can be seen in the Zoological 

 Society's Gardens in London, it is needless to describe it more 

 fully. 



1 In the Himalayas the villagers always cultivate their crops in small fields 

 arranged in flat terraces, one below another, in such a manner as to allow of 

 their being irrigated from some neighbouring stream. 



