316 The Fowl-like Birds 



The markings on the wings and tail are only seen to advantage as the male is 

 displaying before the female, when the tail is held erect and the wings spread 

 and thrown forward until they make a great circular fan or shield, behind which 

 even the head is dften concealed. Of the habits of the Argus Pheasant, Mr. 

 Davidson writes entertainingly as follows: "They live quite solitary, 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 in a dark, gloomy ravine entirely surrounded and shut in by 

 dense cane-brakes and rank vegetation; sometimes on the top of a hill where 

 the jungle is comparatively open from which he clears all the dead leaves and 

 mud for a space of six or eight yards square, until nothing but the bare clean 

 earth remains, and thereafter he keeps his place comparatively clean, removing 

 carefully every dead leaf or twig that happens to fall on it from the trees above. 

 These cleared spots are undoubtedly used as dancing grounds, and the males 

 are always to be found at home, roosting at night on some tree close by. They 

 are the most difficult birds I know of to approach." The female is a plain bird 

 of mottled and barred black and buff without the eye-spots on the wings, and but 

 thirty inches of total length. Like the male, she lives quite solitary, but has no 

 cleared space, and wanders about the forest apparently without any fixed resi- 

 dence. But little appears to be known regarding their nesting habits. 



Gray's Argus is smaller and has the mantle and wing-coverts black mottled 

 with white and rufous, while Rheinardt's Argus Pheasant (Rheinardius ocellatus), 

 separated as a distinct genus on the ground that the secondary quills are not 

 longer than the primaries, has the tail in the male even more elongate, being 

 sixty inches out of a total length of eighty-four inches ; it is a native of the moun- 

 tains in the interior of Tonkin, but is very rare, at least in collections, and little 

 is known of its habits. 



Pea Fowls. The final genus to be noticed embraces the splendid Pea Fowls 

 (Pavo), which, in addition to their gorgeous coloration, are distinguished at once 

 by having the upper tail-coverts enormously elongated into a magnificent train 

 which far exceeds the tail in length. Three species are recognized, one of which, 

 however, is of rather doubtful status, being perhaps a domestic ^riety and from 

 an unknown locality. Of the other species the Common Peacock (P. cristatus) 

 is a native of the Indian peninsula, Ceylon, and Assam, but is now spread as a 

 familiar domestic bird throughout most of the world, having been in domestica- 

 tion in Judea, certainly from the time of Solomon, while in Greece it appears 

 to have become well known after Alexander's Indian expedition. From Greece 

 it spread to Rome and gradually westward, "and in many different ways has 

 touched human life and fancy. It was the bird of Juno to the Greeks and 

 Romans, and emblematic of a glorified body to the early Christians ; its feathers 

 have adorned many a throne and shrine, and the perverted luxury of the later 

 Roman empire made an entree of the tongues and brains." Fortunately too 

 well known to need description, a brief account of it in a wild state may be given. 

 It is an extremely shy bird, frequenting mostly the lower elevations and moun- 



