250 A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 



mangrove islet. As they crossed the sun's path, they became silhouettes of ebony ; 

 when they swung up to their roost, they showed as purest ivory against the dark foliage. 

 Forty, fifty, seventy came, all concentrating on one or two of the trees. 



Of the colours of such a scene none may write. The maze of rose, salmon, scarlet, 

 violet, mauve, and the hundred unnamed tropical tints, succeeding one another and 

 staining sky and sea and land, defy pen as well as brush. 



The afterglow of softened tones of orange and yellow had come, glowing strongest 

 from the east, as if a new dawn had begun, when three birds walked quietly out of the 

 bushes, and picked their way over the high tide drift-line of shells and corals. They 

 were Green Junglefowl — two cocks and a hen, all young birds of the year. Even in this 

 faint light I could catch an occasional metallic glint from the plumage of the leader as he 

 scratched half-heartedly here and there among the shells. The small size of his comb 

 and tail and the buff marks on his wings clearly betrayed his immaturity. 



The hen stabbed at a prickly pear fruit, and buried its beak deep in the rosy juice ; 

 another chased a flying insect. After a few minutes one of the cocks crouched and 

 sprang into the air with a low cackle, and his two companions were on the wing a 

 moment later. Up and up they went, out over the breakers, straight, as only birds can 

 fly, to the mangroves. They almost vanished from my straining eyes before they landed, 

 but I could see a branch bend beneath their weight before the afterglow snufl'ed out like 

 a candle and the faint silver of the crescent moon began its dance on the ripples. The 

 night wind arose, swept through the palm fronds and clattered their frilled edges 

 together like a myriad castanets ; the air was filled with the aromatic incense of leaves 

 which I had crushed underfoot, and the last sound in my ears was the lulling crescendo 

 boom of the breakers. 



GENERAL DISTRIBUTION 



The Javan Junglefowl bears the distinction of being the only member of the group 

 included in this monograph whose home lies altogether south of the equator. It 

 resembles its congener, the Ceylon junglefowl, in being confined chiefly to one large 

 island. 



It is a bird of the drier coastal belt, extending inland along the lower valleys, and 

 in some cases ascending the mountains to a considerable height, but always in places 

 where the configuration of the land results in a lessened degree of humidity. I have no 

 reliable record of its occurrence over twenty-three hundred feet, and at this point it is 

 very rare, and shifts downward at the beginning of the rains. 



Besides this altitudinal, the species has a marked longitudinal distribution in Java. 

 It is found in greatest abundance on the east and north-east coasts, becoming more rare 

 as we approach the western end of the island, where in many places it is altogether 

 absent. As one of many examples of the data on which I base this statement, I found 

 that on most of the big estates in the Preanger the red junglefowl is well known, while 

 the Javan bird had never been seen or heard of. This is in country lower than one 

 hundred feet elevation, from the sea-coast to a distance of forty miles inland. 



This eastern concentration of numbers becomes an actual centre of distribution 

 when we add to this area the two easterly-stretching chains of small islands : Madura 

 and Kangean to the north, and Bali, Lombok, Sumbawa, Flores and Alor to the east. 



