ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN. 



767 



DEODARS AND SPRUCES OF GARHVVAL: WESTERN HIMALAYAS. 

 The heights are the home of the Cheer Pheasant; the lower forests the haunt of the Koklass. 



taining most interesting notes on the lives of 

 the pheasants of this wild country. Among 

 forests of magnificent deodars, spruces and firs 

 we studied the Cheer. (Catreus), the Koklass. 

 (Pucrasia). and the other western Himalayan 

 pheasants. 



On our way back we spent a short time in the 

 plains of India, although it was the hot season. 

 In the parched nullas and even in the open, al- 

 most barren plains, the Peafowl and Red Jun- 

 glefowl were found. Everywhere in India and 

 later in Burma, the abundance and fearless- 

 ness of numerous forms of bird life was verv 

 striking. This is apparently due to the all- 

 pervading religion of the natives which forbids 

 the taking of life, thus doing away with the 

 need of game laws. At the frontier and beyond 

 these countries, where the most interesting forms 

 of pheasants are found, such beneficial influence 

 unfortunately does not extend. 



The rains having started, and Assam and 

 Burma thus rendered inaccessible, we steamed 

 from Calcutta seventeen hundred miles south to 



Singapore. Here we established a second cen- 

 ter of operations, making a series of radiating 

 trips, east to Borneo, west to the islands off 

 Sumatra, south to Java and north to the Malay 

 States. 



In Sarawak, Borneo, we lived for weeks 

 with the head-hunting Dyaks, travelling in a 

 seventy-foot canoe far up into the interior, al- 

 most to the Dutch border, this trip proving in 

 many respects one of the wildest and most in- 

 teresting of our explorations. The forests of 

 the country in general were disappointing, vast 

 areas having been burned by the Dyaks in 

 former years, and the second growth had never 

 reached real tropical luxuriance even in the low 

 lying alluvial zone. But the intensely interest- 

 ing fauna — both mammalian and avian — was 

 unsurpassed by that of any other eastern land 

 visited by us. We had under observation close 

 to our camps such mammals as Nasalis, Hi/lo- 

 batc.t, Galeopitkecus, Pteropus, Gymnura, Tu- 

 paia, Hemigalea, Arctictis, Paradoxurus, He- 

 larctos, Sits, Tragi! I us and Cynogale, and oh- 



