92 A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 



the slope, and I grasped my three-barrelled gun. A brace of tigers had taken toll of 

 mules not far away, but this alarm ended in silence and mystery. 



An hour passed with no sound of pheasants to reward my patience. Then a cloud 

 blotted the sun, and a chill followed the warmth and stilled the humming insects. 

 A wind rose, and even when the long, slanting rays at last shone forth, the cold of night 

 still filled the air. I crept slowly to a projecting spur, and found the wind blowing 

 freshly on the other side. The moment it blew against my face I heard, a short distance 

 away, the scratching which always meant pheasants of some kind. Twice a bird whirred, 

 and then, walking slowly downward, on the way to the water at the bottom of the gorge, 

 there appeared a stately kaleege, clad in ebony and silvery white. This was a time 

 when I wanted the bird more than any hint of its life-history which observation in the 

 failing light might give, so I raised my gun and fired. Two more birds burst forth 

 from the feathery bamboo, and on wide-spread vibrating wings flew and finally scaled 

 down the great gorge, until their white forms were swallowed up in the darkness far 

 below. Only a few weeks before, I had watched the blackest of all the kaleege not far 

 from the banks of the Irrawaddy, and here were the outposts of the silver clan, which 

 stretched on and on to the eastward until fairly stopped by the shores of the Pacific. 



This ended my personal experience with this form. I had known that it (+ jonesi) 

 was believed to range widely over Yunnan and the Shan country. Not, however, until 

 I had access to an unexpected and unusually large amount of material was their wide 

 distribution proved beyond doubt. For a year or more a Chinaman had assiduously 

 collected silver kaleege pheasants in various parts of Yunnan and the Northern Shan 

 States, and when he had gathered six large bales, he boxed them up, labelled them 

 ''ducks' feathers," and shipped them via Bhamo to Rangoon, en route to the milliners of 

 Europe. But the Custom officials at Rangoon, having had previous experience with 

 Chinamen and with ducks' feathers, investigated, and in place of the feathers of domestic 

 ducks, found hundreds of skins of silver kaleege, with a scattering of Lady Amherst and 

 Burmese bar-tailed pheasants. The bales were promptly confiscated and condemned, 

 and at the moment when awaiting destruction I was fortunate enough to come across 

 the great mass of skins. I began at once to set official machinery in motion, and with 

 the help of a very amiable collector of customs and Dr. Annandale of the Indian 

 Museum, the entire lot was turned over to me. I spent considerable time in studying 

 the fragments, and later the best skins were picked out and sent to me. 



I found that in one bale about twenty-five per cent, were pure nydhe^nerus, while 

 sixty per cent, were equally typical ripponi, the remaining fifteen per cent, showing 

 intermediate grades between the two. Later I compared this lot with several ripponi 

 skins and found them about identical, though fluctuating slightly in the direction of 

 whiter nycthemerus, or with the blacker shades of the so-called rufipes. 



Since the above was written I have examined the specimens in the other bales, with 

 still more interesting and significant results. About thirty-five per cent, were nycthe- 

 merus, fifteen per cent, might be rufipes, another fifteen were sharpei, twenty per cent, 

 approached ripponi, five per cent, were close to horsfieldi, while the remainder were 

 anomalous. 



I have presented considerable data based on observations in the field to show how 

 variable were birds even in the same flock in certain parts of Northern Burma. I do 



