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Euplocamus leucomelanus, Latham. 



VeraaCUlar ITaiaeS.— [Kalich, Kalij (Perbuttia), Rechabo, (Bhutia) Nepal.] 



T is very amusing to look back on the past literature 

 of these Kalij Pheasants. 



We find Adams (P. Z. S., 1858, 499) doubting whe- 

 ther there is more than one. He says : " melanonottis, 

 Blyth, comes very close to albocristatics, but has 

 not the white markings on the crest and back ; yet 

 the species is subject to variety ; so much so that it is 

 questionable if Blyth' s bird is a distinct species." 



Tickell admitted two, but united horsfteldi with melanonotus. 

 Blyth admitted three, but following Gray and a host of other 

 writers, declared the present species, which we may probably 

 call " leucomelanus" a hybrid between the White-crested and 

 Black-backed Kalij. 



No species is, however, better establishable than the Nepal 

 Kalij. It has a wide but accurately definable range, throughout 

 which it retains an uniform plumage, conspicuously distinct 

 from that of all the other three species, and within which range 

 no other of the allied species occurs. 



Throughout a tract over 350* miles in length, and from 60 to 

 100 miles in width, in fact throughout the whole of Nepal, except 

 perhaps the extreme easternmost and westernmost portions, 

 leucomelanus is the only Kalij that occurs. 



Hodgson notes that he never saw any other bird in Nepal 

 except one white-crested one, brought from beyond Jumla, and 

 that he had seen hundreds of black-crested ones. He never 

 saw melanonotus until he went to Sikhim. Scully, who has been 

 some eighteen months in Nepal, whence he brought me some 

 twenty specimens of leucomelanus, and where he had examined 

 double this number, never saw any species there but this. 



It is a misuse of language to talk of a species like this as a 

 hybrid, just as it is to apply the same term to Euplocamus cuvieri, 

 which occupies the entire Aracan Hill ranges, and is, I believe, 

 the only Pheasant there found. 



* I am well within the mark here, for Nepal is close on 500 miles in length. 



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