PHOTOGRAVURE 56 



HOME OF IJIMA'S COPPER PHEASANT IN SOUTHERN JAPAN 



The most beautiful spots beloved by Ijima's white-backed Copper Pheasant are carefully preserved 

 because of regard for some ancestral shade whose body lies buried near by. Such a place has a carpet of 

 ferns, bracken and soft bamboo grass, and a mid-growth of graceful camellias — the tsubaki of the Japanese — 

 whose myriad scarlet bell flowers sway in the wind, their clapper stamens muffled with knobs of yellow 

 pollen. High above all rises the great, evergreen expanse of camphor trees, in grace and size rivalling any 

 grove of English oaks. A single leaf plucked from the mighty branches perfumes the whole glade with the 

 aromatic camphor incense. 



The upper photograph shows open Copper Pheasant country near the southern coast of Kiusiu, facing 

 the great island volcano of Sakuragima. The lower photograph is a grove of camphor trees where several 

 pairs of pheasants lived and roosted. 



