364 : THE ZOOLOGIST. 
you with your amusement and fill your larder. Wherever there 
are trees, or even bushes, though it be on the very roadside, you 
feel you are not quite safe from one or other of that game and 
handsome family. The pheasants that you may expect to meet 
at this season of the year are practically four only, unless, 
indeed, you go somewhat further afield than I am now contem- 
plating your doing. These are the Monal, Lophophorus impey- 
anus; the Koklass or Pucras, Pucrasia macrolopha; the Cheer, 
Phasianus Wallichi; and the White-crested Kalij, Huplocamus 
albocristatus. The handsome Jewar, or so-calied ‘‘ Argus 
Pheasant” of that region, Ceriornis melanocephala, one of the 
tragopans, is still, I believe, to be met with in the higher regions 
of forest, somewhat more remote from Simla, but quite as an 
exception within the region I am now considering. It is a shy 
bird apparently, of somewhat meditative, if not gloomy dispo- 
sition, favouring the darkest depths of the remotest forests. Yet 
curiously, as pointed out by more than one writer on the subject, 
it seems to be the most easily tamed of all the Himalayan 
pheasants ; while the Kalij, which in its wild state seems scarcely 
happy far away from the sound of the human voice, is the most 
difficult to domesticate. 
The Monal and the Koklass, and specially the former, are 
distinctly forest birds, loving the dark dense forests of deodar, 
juniper, and yew ; while the Cheer and the Kalij prefer somewhat 
more open ground, interspersed with woods of pine, oak and 
rhododendron, with a thick undergrowth of bushes, ferns, and 
grasses. The Monal I have not found at a much lower elevation 
than 7000 feet; the Koklass seldom below 6000 feet ; from 5000 
or lower to 7000 feet seems to be the favourite region of the Cheer 
and the Kalij. Though all four birds are now, I believe, uni- 
versally regarded as Pheasants, you will see from a comparison 
of specimens that they differ from one another very consider- 
ably in character. There is no mistaking the Cheer, with his 
typically long tail, for anything else than a Pheasant. A cock 
Cheer in form and feature, though not in colour, differs very 
slightly from the cock Pheasant of our English covers, and is 
about the same weight, say 33 lbs. The Koklass is evidently a 
near relation, being a typical Pheasant in all respects, save that 
he is wanting in the long tail-feathers. But the Monal, with his 
gorgeous blue, green, copper, and bronze tints, his peculiar 
