CABOT'S TRAGOPAN 103 



pillars, from a maple, tempted them ; then they began to take small garden worms 

 chopped small, and ants' eggs. At the end of a week, when I had got them 

 on to custard and fresh lettuce, in addition to the other things, I began to 

 think that they would live. But they were much slower than chickens of the 

 same age in taking to the foster-mother, and, until they learnt to return to the 

 warm compartment, I had to shut them in at dusk, after their last meal, letting 

 them out for another feed at 4 a.m. the next morning, and again confining them 

 till I was about for the day. But during the daytime I kept them in the open 

 air as much as the weather would permit. The cleverness in perching and climb- 

 ing, so noticeable in the adult, was soon exhibited by the chicks. They would fly 

 backwards and forwards between branches, which I fixed in their wire run, quite as 

 neatly as any young passerine bird ; and, if left a little later than usual at roosting 

 time, I always found them sleeping side by side on a perch. I should imagine that 

 in the wild state, the young would soon follow the hen bird and perch at night. 

 As they grew they began to take a little hemp seed and wheat as well as a little 

 custard, also earthworm, and little a fruit, of both of which last they were very 

 fond. One of the two, the smaller bird, was attacked by a weasel, and killed 

 before help arrived, but the other, evidently a young male, is alive and well, 

 and already (Dec. 3, 1901) shows a good deal of bright colour in the plumage of 

 the head and upper portion of the neck. Judging from specimens of these three 

 species imported in the winter or spring, I feel sure that no further progress in 

 the assumption of the male plumage is made until the full moult in the second 

 year. 



" In his Handbook to the Game Birds, Mr. Ogilvie-Grant refers to the Abbe 

 David's opinion that this species of horned pheasant, of which a coloured plate is 

 given, differs from the other members of the genus in getting the adult plumage in 

 the first autumn. But this is clearly not so, and the young male Cabot's Tragopan, 

 though differing slightly from the immature female in the pattern of the feathers, is 

 equally sombre in colour, with the slight exception referred to above, until in the 

 autumn of the second year the beautiful colouring of the male is assumed. 



" The eggs are without gloss and of a buff colour, freckled with a rusty red. 



"It is not, of course, safe to generalize too freely from a particular instance ; 

 but from the persistent behaviour of my bird during two seasons, it would appear 

 that the female of this Tragopan is inclined to seek a nesting place off the ground." 



In 1902 Mr. St. Quintin records that a second Cabot hen laid "her two eggs 

 in a pigeon's nest about eight feet up in a spruce tree. She was watched lining 

 the nest with dead twigs which she broke off the neighbouring branches, adding 

 considerably to the original structure." 



DETAILED DESCRIPTION 



Adult Male. — Head black, save for the central and rear elongated crest feathers 

 which are orange, paler, at base. The black extends backward well down on the 

 neck and borders the bare facial skin and the throat lappet. On the side neck, 



