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Although I have retained the Cheer in the genus Phasianus, 

 it is so unlike all the other known members of this genus, that 

 it might well be relegated, as many authors have relegated it, to 

 a distinct genus of its own, (Catreiis). 



The genus Phasianus includes some nine or ten species, all more 

 or less closely resembling our Common European Pheasant (the 

 original habitat of which is said to have been the shores of the 

 Caspian, the Caucasus, and Asia Minor) and all belonging to 

 Japan, China, and the more temperate portions of Asia north 

 of the Himalayas. 



Then we have the Cheer, sui generis, whose habitat has already 

 been described, and lastly three other very splendid and aberrant 

 forms, each of which might well, like the Cheer, be separated 

 in a distinct genus of its own, w> : Reeves' and Elliot's Pheasants 

 from China and Scemmerring's from Japan. 



