12 A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 



the bear discovered the pheasant, stretched out his nose, sniffed, and went on with his 

 grubbing. The bird went behind a bush, and immediately there came forth a great 

 scratching and scuffling among the dead leaves. I marvelled at the recklessness of this 

 usually wary bird, but the noise was explained when a single small babbler appeared, 

 still scratching up the debris, or picking the leaves up one by one and hurling them over 

 its back, after the manner of ant-thrushes in the South American jungles. This one 

 small bird made a far greater disturbance than the pheasant and bear together. 

 When the kaleege again came out it walked slowly past the bear, making a slight 

 detour, but within twenty feet, and actually, when a few yards uphill, leaped upward at a 

 panicle of blossoms and caught some insect. So accurately do the wilderness folk gauge 

 one another's possibilities of harmfulness ! 



But at this point the pheasant saw my tent, and though there was no sudden alarm, 

 yet a long, searching scrutiny left a suspicion, which dominated all other feelings, and 

 with tail and head raised, with graceful, dignified steps, it made its way ten yards or more 

 along the slope of the hill before it ventured to pass the tent. On the summit the bird 

 hesitated a moment, standing silhouetted against the distant peaks and the sky, a 

 beautiful symbol of alert eyesight and poised body. 



In the never-ceasing warfare of the Himalayan jungles, this individual was a 

 success ; it had pitted its weak form, but keen eyes and ears, against the powerful 

 muscles and delicate power of scent of the beasts of prey. As this thought came to 

 mind a fox barked in the distance. The bear gave a last snort, left his field of manna 

 and ambled slowly over the ridge beyond me. He had not descended twenty feet before 

 he stopped, as if blocked by some insurmountable, material wall. For one instant his 

 nose was stretched out toward me, distorted with the agony of supreme endeavour, and 

 then, whirling in his tracks, he fled over rocks and turf, tearing through shrubs and 

 bushes headlong, recklessly, from the dread hidden danger. I wished him luck in his 

 strange life — a creature who by teeth and relationship should be meat-eating and 

 animal-slaying, but who prefers berries and roots and a fat, easy life, seldom or never 

 molesting the hunter unless wounded or in defence of cubs. How did the pheasant 

 know this ? How too did the pheasant read danger in the first retrogade movement of 

 the bear, for no warning scent had come to its all but dead nostrils, and only the vaguest 

 of suspicions through eyesight ? Yet at the sudden turn of the bear the kaleege leaped 

 into the air with a single subdued note, and after a few rapid wing-beats sailed in a 

 beautiful long, descending curve far down into the valley, almost to the stream for which 

 it had been headed. Thus was a bird's thirst quenched the quicker, and that of a bear 

 delayed by my hidden presence on the ridge top. 



In the shadow of the hill I began my long walk back to camp, passing through the 

 favourite feeding-grounds of the White-crested Kaleege. The slight breeze had died 

 down, and as I reached the zone where rain had fallen, the air became heavy with scent. 

 In passing through the pleasant gloom of the conifer forest each glade seemed to have 

 its particular dominant perfume, governed by the predominating blossom of this lush 

 season of the year. One was starred with a myriad long-stemmed strawberry blooms ; 

 in another the pale blue faces of a multitude of violets showed faintly — more noticeable 

 by the sweetness of their odour than their colour. The dominant hue of the forest 

 blossoms was white, and in another glade was a host of large anemones, many splashed 



