186 THE NEPAL KALIJ.
It may appear at first sight inconsistent for me to insist on
dividing the Kalij Pheasants into four species, while I deprecate
making more than one of the Koklass.
But the cases are wholly different. In the Koklass my large
scries and all the hundreds of others that I have examined,
tend to prove that all three forms grade by absolutely insensible
degrees into each other, and thus form a single undivided
chain, although the links at either extremity and towards the
centre differ somewhat in pattern. This unbroken chain constitutes,
according to my views, a single species.
On the other hand, the four Kalij Pheasants each constitute a
separate chain. I have never yet seen a single wild-killed specimen
bridging over the differences between any two of the four.
Each has a distinct and wide range, throughout which it is
invariable, and which, so far as wc know, is separated by blanks
in which no Kalij occurs from the ranges of all the others.
In regard to this species, Dr. Scully, to whom belongs the
credit of rehabilitating it, writes :—
" The adult male of this species differs from G. albocristatus
in having a small black crest, instead of an ample tvhite one ;
in the white tips to the feathers of the rump and upper tailcoverts
being much narrower and further apart ; and in the
tarsi being more slender. From melanonotus it differs in having
the rump and upper tail-coverts white tipped ; in the feathers
of the throat and breast being darker, and more grey ; and in
having the tarsi much more slender. From horsfieldi it differs
conspicuously in having the feathers of the throat and breast
greyish white and lanceolate, instead of pure black and rounded ;
and in having the rump and upper tail-coverts much more
narrowly tipped with white.
" The adult female resembles that of melanonotus much more
closely than it does those of either albocristatus or horsfieldi.
I t differs from melanonotus in having the feathers of the upper
surface more broadly margined with greyish white ; the middle
tail-feathers arc more broadly vcrmiccllatcd, though not so
prominently as in albocristatus; the edgings to the feathers of
the lower surface contrast more, and the rump contrasts more
with the middle tail-feathers—in this respect recalling horsfieldi,
but in no other.
" This bird is no doubt the Phasianus leucomclanus of
Latham, ' Ind. Orn.,' II., 633. Kirkpatrick, in his 'Account
of the Kingdom of Nepal' (1811, p. 132), gives a good figure
of this Kalij, showing its distinctive points, viz., black crest,
white barred lower back, and grey white throat and breast,
and says:—' The Kalij is met with in the thickets which
overrun the gorges of the mountains near Noakote, &c.' Mr.
Hodgson, curiously enough, seems to have overlooked the distinctness
of the species. In his drawings, now in Mr. Hume's
custody, he gives an excellent figure of our bird, but labels it
THE NEPAL KALIJ.
Gallophasis albocristatus * (!) an impossible title, seeing that the
bird has a black crest. In both editions of the B. M. Catalogue
of Mr. Hodgson's collection (1846 and 1863) Gallophasis
leucomclanus is entered ; but then albocristatus is added as a
synonym, which is clearly an error.
" But it may be, and indeed has been, held that the Nepal
Kalij is a hybrid between albocristatus and melanonotus. In disproof
of this theory, I can now bring forward ample evidence.
" The Nepal Kalij is a most interesting species, exactly intermediate
in colouration and in habitat to the White-crested and
Black-backed Kalij Pheasants, and is possibly the older form
from which the other two have branched off to west and east
and become modified. During the two years I resided in Nepal
I tried in vain, both personally and by the offer of rewards, to
obtain a specimen of either albocristatus or melanonotus, which, on
the "hybrid" theory, should have been found there interbreeding.
I have seen scores of the Nepal Kalij (of which at least thirty
were adult males), and they were all exactly alike and constant
to the definition above given of the species.
" Any one seeing only a single male bird of leucomclanus
would perhaps naturally conclude that it was a hybrid ; but
when the two supposed parent species are found to be entirely
absent from the large tract of country where the Nepal Kalij
abounds, while the characters of the latter are constant in a
large series of specimens—the conviction that it is a thoroughly
good species seems to me to be irresistible.
" The Nepal Kalij extends to the east nearly as far as the
Aum I believe, melanonotus being found east of that river only ;
of the range of our bird to the west I have no certain information,
but albocristatus probably replaces it in the extreme
western portion of the Nepal territories."
THE HABITS and nidification of this species are, of course,
very similar to those of the other Kalij Pheasants. This species,
however, would not seem to descend quite so low as the preceding.
Hodgson notes : " This is by far the commonest Pheasant
in Nepal. Its range is the central region ; it is never found in
the Tarai, seldom in the Cachar.-f- Where Galius ferrugincus
ends there the Kalij begins, and extends, though in diminishing
numbers, to the region of the Moonal and Tragopan.
Dr. Scully says :—
" Leucomclanus is common wherever thick forest is found,
from Hitorna in the Nepal Dun to the Valley of Nepal ; in all
* There tire several figures, big ami little ; but there is also one of true " altocrislatits"
which Mr. Hodgson notes as being the only one of the kind he had seen,
so that, though he gave no separate name, he did recognize the difference.
•\~ This is Mr. Hodgson's name for tire more elevated regions of Nepal. Elsewhere
the term is applied to low alluvial flats along the banks of the large rivers of
Continental India.