i8o A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 



exist, and can be got, His Highness is pretty sure to insist on a good supply 

 henceforth. 



''The live bird, though a full-grown cock, became perfectly tame in a few days, 

 and a great favourite in the camp. It would eat bread, boiled rice, winged white 

 ants, moths, taking them gingerly out of our hands. At last I thought I really had 

 a prize for the Zoo, something worth sending. Alas, the last day I was in the 

 Eastern Hills, about the middle of the night, the huts in which my servants were, 

 and in which was also my poor pheasant, suddenly caught fire. How, we do not 

 know, but made of dry palm and cane leaves, they were like tinder, and went off 

 almost like gunpowder. The men tumbled out somehow, without shoes, clothes and 

 bedding, and all more or less singed, but everything was destroyed, and amongst 

 the rest our poor pet. It was under a heavy wooden trestle, which was only slightly 

 charred, and the bird itself was not burnt, but had only had its feathers somew^hat 

 singed, and had apparently died from suffocation. 



"According to the accounts of my savages, these birds live in dense hill forests 

 at elevations of from 2,500 feet (the height of the lower end of the Manipur plain, or, as 

 it is miscalled, valley) to fully 5,000 feet. They prefer the neighbourhood of streams, 

 and are neither rare nor shy. They extend right through the Kamhow territory into 

 Eastern Looshai and North-west Independent Burma. 



''That they occasionally stray up the Jhiri Valley well into Manipur is probable 

 and they may occur not only where we procured them in the extreme south of that 

 State, but also probably in the southern portion of its Eastern Hills." 



With the exception of this account, which was written over thirty years ago, the 

 literature of ornithology offers little in regard to the life history of this pheasant. I was 

 unable to visit its haunts, and therefore did not see the bird in life. 



Baker records that Hopwood and Mackenzie, when touring in the North Chin 

 Hills, had a clutch of eight eggs brought in to them in the end of April 1914 by the 

 Chins, said to be those of Hume's Pheasant ; unfortunately they were on the verge of 

 hatching, and it was only possible to save four eggs out of the clutch. The eggs were 

 not such as had been expected, so that it was with the greatest delight the same two 

 collectors had the good luck themselves to take a second nest and see the parent bird 

 within a few days of receiving the first. This nest, which was found on the ist of May, 

 contained only seven eggs. 



In the following year, near the same spot and on the same date, Mr. Mackenzie 

 obtained another nest with ten eggs, while on the 20th of April and the ist of May two 

 other clutches were brought to him by Chins containing respectively six and seven eggs. 

 In neither of these two instances were the parent birds trapped, though the Chins 

 produced some feathers to support their story ; the eggs are, however, exactly similar 

 to those taken personally by Mr. Mackenzie, and there does not seem to be any reason 

 to doubt their authenticity. 



"All these eggs were taken from a ridge above and to the west of Haingyan, near 

 Hankin, at an elevation of some seven thousand feet. 



" The eggs are certainly not in the least like what I should have expected, being far 

 more like small, fragile eggs of the junglefowl than those of the true pheasants. At the 

 same time, even if Mr. Mackenzie had not, as he informs me in a letter, on the one 



