BORNEAN ARGUS PHEASANT 149 



not complied with ; such as the condition of the weather, the presence or absence of 

 certain plants or birds in the immediate vicinity, and many still more trivial omens. Still 

 another method, the least skilful of all which I observed, was practised by some Dyak 

 boys. This was merely to find out the roosting-place of the Argus, and to scatter an 

 abundance of soft, but strong twine about on the ground beneath. This twine is made 

 of the inner bark of some vegetable growth, and in colour closely resembles the dead 

 leaves and other debris. The boys never had any success, but one of the Argus which was 

 brought in to me by an up-river Kayan was entangled in a perfect maze of this twine, 

 so much so that its broken and bedraggled plumage was useless, and I skeletonized it. 



There is a general belief among the Dyaks of Sarawak, both the Sea Dyaks and 

 Kayans, that there are two species of Argus. One they call Ruai moo-bough, which has 

 long feathers and a striped breast, obviously the fully adult male, while the other smaller 

 ones, immature males in fact, are Ruai lal-lung. 



They give a very ingenious explanation of the reason why the Argus has two 

 extremely long tail-feathers. The bird, they think, roosts lengthwise along some stout 

 branch, facing outward, with the tail-feathers lying along the branch toward the trunk 

 of the tree. When a musang, or civet cat, or other attacking animal creeps toward the 

 bird, it treads on the tail-feathers, awakens the Argus and gives it a chance to escape. 



DETAILED DESCRIPTION 



Adult Male.— Feathers of the forehead and top of the head, short, black, velvety, 

 and somewhat recurved. Those of the occiput twice as long, forming a tuft, still more 

 recurved and slightly variegated with white. Plumage of the nape and upper neck, long, 

 loose-webbed and grizzled, being indistinctly barred with black and white, with silvery 

 white shafts. Ears encircled with a row of stiff, thin-barbed featherlets ; the remainder 

 of the head and neck being almost bare, with only a thin scattering of short, degenerate, 

 white featherlets. 



The lower hind neck, entire mantle, wing-coverts (except the primary coverts), and 

 the tertiaries give a general impression of a black ground, irregularly dotted and 

 checkered with white. The visible portion of a typical mantle feather, shows, on the 

 black ground, numerous dots and angular spots of white, mingled with, and separated 

 by, still smaller and more numerous, inconspicuous, chestnut markings. On the 

 concealed portion of the web the chestnut disappears and the white falls into broken, 

 oblique cross-bars. On the wing-coverts and innermost wing-feathers the white 

 assumes the oblique cross-bar pattern quite to the feather tip, bars which are usually 

 strongly noded. When these nodes become large enough they break through -the black 

 and coalesce, cutting up the black into large round dots, linearly arranged. This 

 pattern characterizes all those portions of the secondaries visible in the closed wing, the 

 primaries, and much of the tail, the pigments varying in the different areas. 



The entire back, rump and all but the longest upper tail-coverts are bright vinaceous 

 buff, shading at the base of the feather into grey, and conspicuously dotted with large, 

 round, black spots more or less regularly disposed in oblique rows. These contour- 

 feathers are very delicate, the shaft becoming extremely attenuated and the entire web 

 thin and pliant. 



