624 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXIV. 



They are fotind only at great elevations in the mountain ranges, 

 extending from Tibet to Eastern China. 



In the Hand-List of Birds Sharpe admits five species in this 

 genus, i.e., tiheianum, leitcurum, inanchitricum, auritmn and harmani. 



At present the number of specimens of these fine pheasants avail- 

 able for examination is really too small to allow of any final decision 

 to be made as to the extent to which they intergrade and as to what 

 shall be considered good species and what merely geographical races 

 or subspecies. 



There appear to be three well defined forms ; one, tihetanuon, in 

 which the colour above is practically piire white or pale grey, a 

 second, aurihtm, in which the colour is dark grey, and a third, 

 manchuricum, in which the colour above is cinereous or brown 

 rather than grey. Even between these, however, it is not alwa^^s 

 easy to define where tihetanum ends and auritmn begins, for hardly 

 any two birds are precisely alike, and a further difficulty which 

 complicates the matter is the want of precise data on several of the 

 few skins we have been able to examine. 



When we come to the question of subspecies, we are confronted 

 with an even harder task. Here we have in some instances skins of 

 birds taken on the same expedition, allotted to different races, 

 although there is absolutely nothing to show that they were not all 

 collected in the same place, and, again, of one species, leucumm, we 

 have two birds selected as the male and female types which are far 

 less alike than are several other specimens which are given a 

 different specific rank. 



There appears however to be in addition to the primary differen- 

 ces between the white and grey forms two minor variations in both 

 of these. In each form there is one race which has no white on the 

 tail feathers, and a second in which there is a certain amount of 

 white or grey generally present, and moreover the absence or presence 

 of this white is accompanied with other fairly stable characteristics, 

 such as the colour of the outer webs of the primaries. 



It seems fairly well proved, also, that these variations are found 

 within certain areas, on the boundaries of which the birds met with 

 are intermediate in their characteristics, a feature which one naturally 

 expects in geographical races or subspecies which have not yet risen 

 to the status of true species. 



Thus we have two forms of tihetanum, one with and the other 

 without white bases to the tail feathers, and the former with grey- 

 brown webs to the outermost primaries, and the latter with white or 

 whitish webs. These two forms should be known as tihetanum 

 tihetanum and tihetanum drouynii. 



In the species auritum we have a similar case of two races, auritum 

 harmani with no white on the tail and avritiim auritum with white bases 

 to the tail feathers, and a much broader ring of white round the head. 



