HORNED ARGUS-PHEASANT. 81 



back, again took the lead upwards. Before we had gone 

 much higher, three or four more gooral sped away up the 

 crags. I took a snap-shot at one of them, which I missed. 

 As we were going through a small birch coppice we flushed 

 a pair of large beautiful birds here called "loongees," and 

 generally known as the horned argus-pheasant. Its habitat 

 is always on the higher ranges, where its wild peculiar call 

 a kind of mewing sound may sometimes be heard issuing 

 from thickets in the pine- forests and birch woods near the 

 snow-line. Being a very shy bird, it is seldom or never met 

 with in the open. Its general colour on the back is a gamely 

 marked greyish -brown. The neck, breast, and shoulders of 

 the cock-bird are blood-red, and from its black head rise a 

 pair of red feathery ears or horns. The whole body, from the 

 neck downwards, is profusely covered with small white spots 

 rimmed with black. In another variety of the same bird, the 

 cock has a black neck, and breast spotted with white instead 

 of the blood -red colour, and over its throat hangs a broad 

 sky-blue wattle, from under which depends a bunch of bright, 

 glossy-red, beard-like hackles. Its long thin horns are fleshy, 

 and devoid of feathers. The hen, of both varieties, is uni- 

 formly brownish-grey, dotted over with white, and minus the 

 colour and appendages about the neck and throat of the 

 cock-bird. 



About noon we reached a small kind of cavity among 

 some steep rocks, where the shikaree proposed we should 

 temporarily establish ourselves. After skinning and break- 

 ing up the gooral, I took a careful search over all the ground 

 in view with the spying-glass. There was a small herd of 

 young buck tahr far away above, near the sky-line ; but the 

 steep intervening ground was so open, that there was no 

 chance of getting near them from below, and it was too late 

 in the afternoon to attempt to approach them from the ridge 

 above, even had it been possible to reach it; we therefore 

 proceeded to try our luck elsewhere. Two moving objects 



F 



