“The great demand for the brilliant skins of the moonal that has existed for many years has led to their almost total extermination in some parts of the hills, as the native shikaris shoot and snare for the pot as well as for skins, and kill as many females as males.  On the other hand, though for nearly thirty years my friend Mr. Wilson has yearly sent home from 1,000 to 1,500 skins of this species and the tragopan, there are still in the woods whence they were obtained as many as, if not more than, when he first entered them, simply because he has rigidly preserved females and nests, and (as amongst English pheasants) one cock suffices for several hens.”

[Illustration:  PHEASANT SNARES Made of Yak Hair, Taken from a Shepherd in Nepal by Mr. Beebe]

Ignoring the uncertainty of the last statement, it is rather absurd to think of a single man “preserving” females and nests in the Himalayas from 1850 to 1880, when the British Government, despite most efficient laws and worthy efforts is unable to protect the birds of these wild regions to-day.  The statement that after thirty to forty-five thousand cock impeyans were shot or snared, as many or more than the original quota remained, could only emanate from the mind of a professional feather-hunter, and Hume should not be blamed for more than the mere repetition of such figures.  Let it be said to the credit of Wilson, the slaughterer of something near forty-five thousand impeyans, that he was a careful observer of the birds’ habits, and has given us an excellent account, somewhat coloured by natives, but on the whole, the best we have had in the past.  But it is not pleasant to read of his waiting until “twenty or thirty have got up and alighted in the surrounding trees, and have then walked up to the different trees and fired at those I wished to procure without alarming the rest, only those very close to the one fired at being disturbed at each report.”

Hume’s opinion that in 1879 there were scores of places where one might secure from ten to eighteen birds in a day, is certainly not true to-day.  Indeed, as early as 1858 we read that “This splendid bird, once so abundant on the Western Himalayas is now far from being so, in consequence of the numbers killed by sportsmen on account of its beauty.  Whole tracts of mountain forest once frequented by the moonal are now almost without a single specimen.”  The same author goes on naively to tell the reader that “Among the most pleasant reminiscences of bygone days is a period of eleven days, spent by the author and a friend on the Choor Mountain near Simia, when among other trophies were numbered sixty-eight moonal pheasants, etc.”

[Illustration:  SILVER PHEASANT SKINS SEIZED AT RANGOON, BRITISH BURMA About 600 Skins out of Several Thousand Confiscated in the Custom House, on their way to the London Feather Market.  Photographed by Mr. Beebe]