662 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL SLST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXIII. 



RoiTglily speaking, as we -vrork ISTortli and East, the birds become 

 more and more white in plnmage, and possibl}?- also get a longer 

 tail, bnt the whitest of those which Gates has named jonesi and 

 Sharpe rifponi are, in a few cases, quite indistingnishable from a 

 specimen of nycthemenis from as far East as Fokhien. It is there- 

 fore Avith some hesitation that I have given stib-specific rank to the 

 very white birds with long tails which are fonnd in the extreme 

 North-East in the inter Salwin-Mekong District. As regards the 

 birds inhabiting the Euby Mines and country North, South, and 

 East thereof, I consider that there are not at present grounds to 

 differentiate more than one sub-species which will be Gates' rufifes, 

 that name having priority amongst those not given to birds which 

 are palpably hybrids. 



Before, however, leaving this area, it is necessary to refer to the 

 fact that we here find some birds with dark greenish and horn, 

 coloured legs, though the vast majority have them red. Gates has 

 deemed this sufficient ground for differentiation into species, but 

 it appears to me that the dark legs are due either to a throw 

 back or to direct hybridization. Birds which cannot be other- 

 wise distinguished, and which live at the same elevation, in 

 the same forest or grass land, and shot on the same day, have in 

 some cases had red, and in others dark coloured legs, and in 

 one instance a fine male was shot which had one leg red and one 

 dark horny green. 



We must also remember that round this North-E astern area a 

 further complication in evolution has arisen, for, Avhilst the majority 

 of birds have been extending due South from the normal habitat 

 of horsfieldi, others have been extending South-East towards the 

 Northern Shan States and here the Eastern extension meets that 

 which has worked first South-East, and then North-East. Moreover,. 

 here also the extreme Eastern limit of the typical black horsfieldi 

 runs into the area occupied by the tj^pical white nyctJiemerus. True, 

 these two species normally occupj'- areas of c[uite difi^erent elevation 

 of country which contrast greatly with one another in their main 

 characteristics, but all pheasants are great travellers and wanderers, 

 and the numerous birds shot shewing self-evident signs of being 

 hybrids prove that interbreeding does go on between the two species, 

 due either to the one species wandering above, or the other 

 descending below, its normal habitat. 



In the second line of extension which has pushed from West to 

 East, the forms attained to pass through cuvieri, to which I have 

 already referred, to a very well-defined form, nilliamsi, inhabiting a 

 tract of low and moderately high hills in the inter Manipur-Chind- 

 win and Irrawaddy Disti"ict. This form is a pai'allel evolution to 

 that of oatesi on the South, but whereas some climatic factor has- 

 induced tiny bars and vermiculations in the South, in the East a 



