YELLOW-NECKED KOKLASS PHEASANT 33 



One author speaks of being certain that these birds are found in the Tung-lin or 

 eastern woods, some one hundred miles north of Pekin, near the tombs of the recent 

 emperors. Here in the foothills of the mountains these pheasants are said to be 

 abundant. 



I spent some time in this region, exploring both outside and inside the Great Wall, 

 but only once caught a glimpse of a Koklass pheasant. This was when I was returning 

 from a long day's tramp, thoroughly tired out from walking rock-strewn stubble. I had 

 halted at a rivulet to drink, and was sitting on a stone, when a Koklass called some 

 distance away. I had been hearing the broken cackle of true pheasants throughout the 

 day, and had not heard the very distinct croaak ! croaak I since I left Garhwal a year 

 before. The day was cold and very cloudy, and rain had fallen at intervals, and the 

 whole rolling plain was most desolate, stretching out endlessly in one direction and 

 ascending steeply into the foothills of the mountains to the north. I crept as silently 

 as possible in the direction of the sound, but as I had no dog I had little hopes even of 

 seeing the bird. Through the mist the stunted, dry vegetation showed dull brownish, 

 dripping, saturated, while the rocks had no healthy covering of moss and lichens, but 

 a dark, shining slime which made walking most difficult. Ahead of me, the rocky 

 character of the ground became dominant and the coarse grass consequently thinned 

 out. Across this space I saw the bird as it ran swiftly from the cover of one clump of 

 dried grass to another. The white neck-patch showed conspicuously and the white 

 tail-tips flashed for an instant as one-half of the tail was spread in helping the bird to 

 turn sharply. Although I tramped for another half-hour, until dusk settled down, I 

 could not catch another sight of the pheasant. 



The two birds which I secured in Pekin and a hen which a Chinaman brought to 

 me a few days after this, had all three been trapped, apparently snared by one leg. The 

 birds are certainly not common in most of the province of Chili, and probably their 

 nearest occurrence in numbers is only to the westward of Shansi. 



CAPTIVITY 



The Yellow-necked has always been about as rare in captivity as the Common 

 Koklass. Several specimens of both sexes have reached England alive, and the record 

 for one showed that it lived in the London Zoological Gardens for four months. 



Aviculturists in France have had better success, as may be judged from the 

 following abstracts of several instances of successful breeding of Yellow-necked Koklass. 

 It is a great pity that no detailed notes as to eggs or chicks were kept. 



*' M. Vekemans [" Bull. Soc. d'Acclim." 1872, p. 384], directeur du Jardin Zoologique 

 d'Anvers, dcrit qu'il a obtenu cette annde pour la premiere fois la reproduction du 

 Pucrasia xanthospila. Cette belle espece de Faisan chinois, rarement importde jusqu'ici, 

 n avait pu ^tre encore multiplide en Europe." 



" Je poss^de ['* Bull. Soc. d'Acclim." 1878, p. 663] depuis 1876 un couple de Pucrasia 

 xanthospila: c'est une espece tres-robuste. Le preuve en est que sur 7 sujets qui 

 m'ont dtd envoy^es du Thibet a trois reprises diffdrentes, tous sont arrives en bon dtat, 

 tandis que la plupart des Tragopans, Crossoptilons, Ithagines succombaient pendant le 

 voyage. 



VOL. Ill F 



