252 ' A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 



Leaving the rest-house, or pasanggrahan, I made my way through cactus hedges 

 and across ploughed fields, and climbed a steep limestone ridge three or four hundred 

 feet high. At the summit was a huge, balanced boulder, and from its rounded, weather- 

 worn back I could overlook many miles of country. Here I began my systematic study 

 of the wild life of the Javan Junglefowl, after having wasted weeks of fruitless search in 

 the west of the island following up false reports. 



These limestone ridges are very characteristic of this north-eastern coast, forming 

 sometimes low lines of hills extending inland, often at right angles to the shore. 

 Between these run small streams, and up to the very slopes of the ridges almost every 

 patch of ground is given over to rice, tapioca, ground bean, Indian corn, or castor oil. 



In the case of most of the birds of the family of pheasants treated of in this 

 monograph, one is concerned chiefly with their wild surroundings, but the Javan coast 

 is almost a solid band of cultivation, and we are forced to link this Junglefowl very 

 closely with this human environment. Farther inland a few stragglers may live in 

 comparative isolation, but here, in its typical home, one is never out of sight of the native 

 fields. The dull, native Javanese think of little else besides their fields, and crave no 

 flesh besides their dried fish, so the Junglefowl are seldom disturbed. 



At this season the grass was dry, the bushes and vines crackled at a touch, and even 

 the cactus pads looked yellow and shrivelled. As I climbed the ridge, the sun beat down 

 with terrific force. Even the butterflies — the yellows and the reds — often sought the 

 shade of tiny stones. Everywhere on the ridge the steel-grey weathered limestone 

 cropped out in a myriad points and sharp edges. One's shoes were soon cut up ; a 

 single sweep of the butterfly-net reduced it to tatters. For the vegetable life, too, as if 

 following out some law of this region. Nature provided a thousand spikes and thorns 

 and briers. 



Toward the summit of the ridge I began to feel the cool sea breeze, which brought 

 no moisture, but which, because of its very dryness, made the great heat easy to endure. 

 The rocks stood up more boldly the higher I ascended, and great water-worn fissures 

 and crevices appeared. In one place I found a well-worn little path, feathers, and 

 abundance of Junglefowl sign. Here I could look down and inward twenty feet or 

 more, and see the light from the other side of the ridge shining through. So somewhere 

 in the cool ramifications of this rocky maze these birds, as I subsequently made certain, 

 spent the heat of the day, and here some of them roosted at night. 



From his lookout on the summit of the ridge, a Junglefowl, emerging at dawn from 

 this roosting-cavern, would see the steep slope dropping rapidly away, a mass of cacti 

 draped with a tangle of briers ; stubby treelets like Japanese stunted conifers ; and 

 aromatic shrubs and herbs, smelling of mint and pennyroyal. Like a myriad toadstools, 

 the sago and cocoanut palms dot the fields, and now and then a feathery wisp of giant 

 bamboo, at this distance appearing exactly like a graceful clump of ferns. Winding up 

 and down the slopes, enclosing only fields of pointed coral rock, are frail stone walls, 

 built of heaped-up bits of angular limestone, all half-hidden by sprawling cactus. 



Farther to the west, in a broad, low valley between two ridges, I found that Jungle- 

 fowl abounded. And here I spent many hours, concealed either in my umbrella tent, or 

 behind a sheltering blind of cactus. At early dawn the birds would work down from 

 the ridges, in small parties of two to five, passing in single file through the corners of 



