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Argus giganteus, Temminck. 



Vernacular Names.— [Quou, Borong Quou, (Malay) ; Kyek-wah, (Siamese) 

 Bankasoon.~\ 



DENIZEN of the densest forest tracts, it is only in the 

 neighbourhood of the Pakchan River, that forms the 

 extreme southern boundary of Tenasserim, that the 

 true Argus Pheasant occurs within our limits. 

 Sportsmen in Upper India persistently call our 

 Tragopans, Argus Pheasants, but a glance at the 

 plates will show how totally different the two are. 

 Mergui is often quoted as a habitat for this species, and in one 

 sense this is correct, for the huge Mergui district, one might 

 almost call it a province, does extend to the Pakchan, but the 

 Mergui of maps, the town, is some 150 miles distant from the 

 nearest forests in which (so far as we have been able to ascertain) 

 the Argus roams. 



In the Malay Peninsula we personally know of its occurrence 

 from Kraw and Renong, on the southern banks of the Pakchan, 

 right down to Johore, the extreme southernmost point of the 

 Peninsula. It also occurs, according to Raffles and others, in 

 Sumatra, and, Mouhot says, in Siam, but its exact limits east- 

 wards on the continent have yet to be defined. 



No European has ever, I believe, shot any number, if indeed 

 any, of this species but my friend Mr. Davison, and I shall there- 

 fore reproduce entire his account of it, lately published in our 

 joint paper on the Birds of Tenasserim : — 



" They live quite solitarily, both males and females. Every male 

 has his own drawing room, of which he is excessively proud, 

 and which he keeps scrupulously clean. They haunt exclusive- 

 ly the depths of the evergreen forests, and each male chooses 

 some open level spot — sometimes down in a dark gloomy 

 ravine, entirely surrounded and shut in by dense cane brakes 

 and rank vegetation — sometimes on the top of a hill where the 

 jungle is comparatively open — from which he clears all the dead 

 leaves and weeds, for a space of six or eight yards square ; 

 until nothing but the bare clean earth remains, and thereafter 

 he keeps this place scrupulously clean, removing carefully every 

 dead leaf or twig that may happen to fall on it from the tre^s 

 above. 



