PLATE XIV 



HIMALAYAN IMPEYAN PHEASANT 

 Lophophortis impeyanus (Latham) 



From Afghanistan to Bhutan, along the whole range of the Himalayas, the Impeyan makes its home. 

 Only the Blood Partridges live at a greater altitude. From one to three miles above the sea, the Impeyan 

 feeds and sleeps and nests. There is beauty to be found in both the cock and the hen, but the colouring 

 of the hen is the umber of dead leaves and the smooth brown of lichens, while the cock is a living mirror 

 of iridescence. Yet life is possible to both amid the same surroundings ; they face the same problems, make 

 the same fight for existence in the face of dangers which threaten from the mountain slopes and from the 

 clouds above them. And each year they rear their broods, which marks the success of their long batde 

 against great odds. In this, they are but repeating the life of the generations before them ; for the Impeyan 

 chain is a long one. It reaches back unnumbered years to that mysterious time before the first men 

 appeared — and the first links were formed long, long before human beings were present to watch the progress 

 of this slow but courageous evolution. 



