82 THE COMMON PEA-FOWL. 



excessively common in the Gdro Hills and in others of the hills 

 south of the Assam Valley." It does not, however, Captain 

 Williamson tells me, occur in the Khasi Hills. 



Heretofore the idea has been that the Common Pea-Fowl did 

 not go eastwards of the Garo Hills and the low valleys running 

 into these, and that elsewhere in Assam it was replaced by the 

 Burmese bird ; but I can find no evidence to support this view. 

 I have never been in Assam, nor have I ever seen specimens of 

 Pea-Fowl thence, but at least a dozen officers now in Assam write 

 to say that the Common Pea-Fowl is abundant there, and that 

 they have seen no other. 



It is said to be found in Chittagong, but this requires confir- 

 mation. I cannot learn that it occurs in Sylhet, or Cachar, or 

 Manipur, or in the Eastern Naga Hills, or in Tipperah, so that 

 it is difficult to believe in its existence wild in Chittagong, 

 though it may not impossibly have been introduced there. 



In the Andamans, it has been introduced, and now, I believe, 

 breeds freely there in the neighbourhood of the settlements ; for 

 a long time it was entirely confined to Ross Island, where the 

 vociferous cries of scores, at all hours, whenever a gun was fired 

 or a gong struck, rendered it, to my notion, a serious nuisance. 



As a rule, the Pea- Fowl is not a bird of high elevations. On 

 the Nilgiris I know it occurs as high as 5,000 feet at Cook's Hill, 

 on the N. E. slopes of those mountains, and it may even, as 

 Jerdon says so, though I have been unable to verify this, occur 

 up to 6,000 feet, but it does not, I believe, ascend the Pulneys, or 

 the Ceylon Hills, to elevations of above 3,000 feet ; and in the 

 Himalayas, though in the river valleys it penetrates, as in Cen- 

 tral Garhwal, far into the hills, it is rarely seen above 2,000 feet. 

 I have however shot it at over 3,000 feet in the lower 

 ranges that overlook the Dun, and at over 4,000 near Bilas- 

 pur, west of Simla ; and Mr. Young writes to me that it " occurs 

 in one locality in the north of Mandi-Doralban, and in Kulu 

 Seoraj at an altitude of 6,000 feet, in both instances haunting one 

 particular valley and not extending beyond it." I suspect, how- 

 ever, that at both these localities and near Bilaspur it has been 

 introduced, and when Dr. Scully, writing from Nepal, says : — 

 " It is found along the outer base of the sandstone range, about 

 Bishiaksh, but not in any great numbers ; it does not extend 

 further into the hills, nor occur in a wild state in the valley of 

 Nepal ; nor does it, to the best of my belief, ascend the hills to 

 a height exceeding 2,000 feet, if even that ;" — he is only, I think, 

 describing the normal distribution of the bird along the entire 

 southern face of the Himalayas. 



BROKEN and jungly ground, where good cover exists, near 

 water on the one hand, and cultivation on the other, is the 

 favourite resort of the Pea-Fowl, and wherever this favourable 



