INTRODUCTION xxi 



life which has been such a boon to the birds in this densely populated part of the world ; 

 in the Malay States and elsewhere great rubber plantings threaten the whole fauna of 

 some places ; in Nepal and Yunnan the plumage hunter is working havoc ; in China 

 the changing diet from rice to meat and the demand in Europe for shiploads of frozen 

 pheasants has swept whole districts clean of these birds. And everywhere unwise and 

 unseasonable shooting and trapping by the natives has told heavily. For some of the 

 pheasants there seemed but short shrift. 



A new, wholly unexpected change has now come to pass, and the terrible history 

 being made in Europe will mean a new lease of life to the creatures of the Eastern 

 jungles. The demand for rubber and for the luxury of frozen pheasant will lessen ; 

 the milliner for a time will be unable to sell his ill-gotten wares; the pressure of 

 Caucasian influence will lighten temporarily, the influx of foreign capital will dwindle, 

 and in a thousand places intended clearings will be abandoned, projected buildings 

 will be deserted. The deep call of the Tragopan and the crow of the Kaleege will 

 increase in volume throughout the jungles of the East, and the birds will return to 

 places from which the inroads of man had driven them. This breathing-space, this 

 far-flung influence of war, may be the last pause in the slow, certain kismet which, 

 from the ultimate increase and spread of mankind, must result finally in the total 

 extinction of these splendid birds. 



PHEASANTS: A BRIEF GENERAL ACCOUNT 



Twenty-five centuries ago long-tailed, ground-loving birds of brilliant plumage 

 were abundant along the banks of the rivers flowing from the Caucasus Mountains 

 into the Black Sea. Aeschylus tells us this district was called Colchis and the 

 principal river the Phasis. Both the Greeks and the Romans knew these birds, 

 esteeming them for their flesh, and calling them ^ao-Lauos cpvis or Phasianus avis 

 — the bird of the Phasis. Even to-day we speak of them and their allies in the 

 almost similar word — Pheasant. The root remains the same, whether as a Frenchman 

 we say Faisan, as a German Fasan, or as an Italian Fagiano. 



Pheasants were painted and embroidered on very old Chinese paper and silk 

 tapestries perhaps a thousand years before the Greeks knew of them — pheasants of 

 other kinds, such as the Golden and the Silver. But our knowledge of these early 

 records is very vague. 



Of even less definite report, though of far greater interest, are the giant pheasants 

 which flapped their wings and crowed, nested and laid their eggs in the strange old 

 Miocene days, when mammals, from shrews to mastodons, were in their prime. 

 This was when the sabre-toothed tigers and huge primitive dogs pursued tapirs and 

 the tiniest of deer over what is now the pleasant southland of France, from the 

 Garonne to the Pyrenees. Forever lost to us are the colours and patterns and habits 

 of these pheasants of old, but from their bones we know that some of them were 

 larger than any living to-day. These and a few more recent fragments are all the 

 evidence we have of the countless generations of birds which preceded the magnificent 

 pheasants living at present on the earth. 



It seems probable that the more immediate ancestors of the pheasants lived in 



