A RAMBLE ROUND SIMLA. 367 
hour, and find them under the very bush you saw them pitch in ; 
and you may beat that bush, or cause it to be beaten, till you are 
on the point of being convinced the bird must have gone, when 
up it gets almost under your very nose, and shoots with tre- 
mendous velocity down hill. This grand bird is, as I have already 
stated, even now very scarce in the neighbourhood of Simla, and 
I very much fear it will soon disappear altogether, its ways and 
habits laying it open to complete extinguishment more than do 
those of other Pheasants. The rest, I think, will always be 
sufficiently able to take care of themselves, a wise Government 
now protecting them in the breeding season, in common, I believe, 
with all game birds of that region. 
As to the Monal, it is more easy for me to be brief, inasmuch 
as the bird is now comparatively scarce in any easily accessible 
part of the neighbourhood of Simla, and it is certainly by no 
means true now, and of that locality, whatever may have been 
the case when “ Mountaineer” wrote (so often quoted by Mr. 
Hume and by Mr. Barnes) that ‘‘ the most indifferent sportsman 
will find little difficulty in getting the Monal.” This is because 
it has been, and is, so much shot for its gorgeous plumage, a 
small piece of which, a lady tells me, costs as much as a guinea 
or more at a fashionable West End bonnet-shop. The man I had 
with me this year to skin what I shot told me he had himself 
skinned some two thousand last season for one firm of exporters 
in Caleutta, the majority of which, I believe, came from the 
neighbourhood of the Chor —a hill some twenty miles (as the 
crow flies) from Simla, but somewhat rugged and inaccessible, 
and removed from any good road. From what little I have seen 
of this bird I can quite imagine that the best sport with it would 
be got by shooting it, as suggested by “ Mountaineer,” with a 
small rifle — such a rifle as the ‘320 or ‘380 bore, Winchester, 
and which I have lately had an opportunity of proving to be a 
wonderfully accurate and reliable little weapon. The bird has a 
habit, when first flushed by dogs, of getting into a bare branch 
of some lofty tree, and thence abusing with great loquacity the 
disturbers of its peace. While so engaged, you may approach to 
within some eighty or a hundred yards of it by using the cover of 
intermediate trees, and at that distance it affords a good mark 
for such a weapon. It is difficult to approach near enough for 
an effective shot with a gun, and the bird is so very wide-awake 
