Q2 A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 
the slope, and I grasped my three-barrelled gun. A brace of tigers had taken toll of 
mules not far away, but this alarm ended in silence and mystery. 
An hour passed with no sound of pheasants to reward my patience. Then a cloud 
blotted the sun, and a chill followed the warmth and stilled the humming insects. 
A wind rose, and even when the long, slanting rays at last shone forth, the cold of night 
still filled the air. I crept slowly to a projecting spur, and found the wind blowing 
freshly on the other side. The moment it blew against my face I heard, a short distance 
away, the scratching which always meant pheasants of some kind. Twice a bird whirred, 
and then, walking slowly downward, on the way to the water at the bottom of the gorge, 
there appeared a stately kaleege, clad in ebony and silvery white. This was a time 
when I wanted the bird more than any hint of its life-history which observation in the 
failing light might give, so I raised my gun and fired. Two more birds burst forth 
from the feathery bamboo, and on wide-spread vibrating wings flew and finally scaled 
down the great gorge, until their white forms were swallowed up in the darkness far 
below. Only a few weeks before, I had watched the blackest of all the kaleege not far 
from the banks of the Irrawaddy, and here were the outposts of the silver clan, which 
stretched on and on to the eastward until fairly stopped by the shores of the Pacific. 
This ended my personal experience with this form. I had known that it (+ jomesz) 
was believed to range widely over Yunnan and the Shan country. Not, however, until 
I had access to an unexpected and unusually large amount of material was their wide 
distribution proved beyond doubt. For a year or more a Chinaman had assiduously 
collected silver kaleege pheasants in various parts of Yunnan and the Northern Shan 
States, and when he had gathered six large bales, he boxed them up, labelled them 
‘ducks’ feathers,” and shipped them via Bhamo to Rangoon, en route to the milliners of 
Europe. But the Custom officials at Rangoon, having had previous experience with 
Chinamen and with ducks’ feathers, investigated, and in place of the feathers of domestic 
ducks, found hundreds of skins of silver kaleege, with a scattering of Lady Amherst and 
Burmese bar-tailed pheasants. The bales were promptly confiscated and condemned, 
and at the moment when awaiting destruction I was fortunate enough to come across 
the great mass of skins. I began at once to set official machinery in motion, and with 
the help of a very amiable collector of customs and Dr. Annandale of the Indian 
Museum, the entire lot was turned over to me. I spent considerable time in studying 
the fragments, and later the best skins were picked out and sent to me. 
I found that in one bale about twenty-five per cent. were pure zycthemerus, while 
sixty per cent. were equally typical ~zffonz, the remaining fifteen per cent. showing 
intermediate grades between the two. Later I compared this lot with several ~pponz 
skins and found them about identical, though fluctuating slightly in the direction of 
whiter zycthemerus, or with the blacker shades of the so-called vajfipes. 
Since the above was written I have examined the specimens in the other bales, with 
still more interesting and significant results, About thirty-five per cent. were xycthe- 
merus, fifteen per cent. might be rufifes, another fifteen were sharper, twenty per cent. 
approached vipponz, five per cent. were close to Aorsfieldi, while the remainder were 
anomalous. 
I have presented considerable data based on observations in the field to show how 
variable were birds even in the same flock in certain parts of Northern Burma. I do 
