In some parts of Ceylon and India the birds are so abundant and easily killed that they do not furnish even passable sport, but in other places they are as wild and difficult to shoot as we found them to be on the Salween River.  In India it is a universal belief among sportsmen that wherever peafowls are common, there tiger will be found.

A very beautiful variety which seems to have arisen abruptly in domestication is the so-called “japanned” or black-shouldered peacock named Pavo nigripennis by Mr. Sclater.  In some respects it is intermediate between P. munticus and P. cristatus and apparently “breeds true” but never has been found in a wild state.  Albino specimens are by no means unusual and are a feature of many zooelogical gardens.

Peacocks have been under domestication for many centuries and are mentioned in the Bible as having been imported into Palestine by Solomon; although the bird is referred to in mythology, the Greeks probably had but little knowledge of it until after the conquests of Alexander.

In the thick jungle only a few hundred yards from our camp on the Salween River I put up a silver pheasant (Euplocamus nycthemerus), one of the earliest known and most beautiful species of the family Phasianidae.  Its white mantle, delicately vermiculated with black, extends like a wedding veil over the head, back and tail, in striking contrast to the blue-black underparts, red cheek patches, and red legs.

This bird was formerly pictured in embroidery upon the heart and back badges of the official dresses of civil mandarins to denote the rank of the wearer, and is found only in southern and western China.  It is by no means abundant in the parts of Yuen-nan which we visited and, moreover, lives in such dense jungle that it is difficult to find.  The natives sometimes snare the birds and offer them for sale alive.

We also saw monkeys at our camp on the Salween River, but were not successful in killing any.  They were probably the Indian baboon (Macacus rhesus) and, for animals which had not been hunted, were most extraordinarily wild.  They were in large herds and sometimes came down to the water to skip and dance along the sand and play among the rocks.  The monkeys invariably appeared on the opposite side of the river from us and by the time we hunted up the boatmen and got the clumsy raft to the other shore the baboons had disappeared in the tall grass or were merrily running through the trees up the mountain-side.

The valley was too dry to be a very productive trapping ground for either small or large mammals, but the birds were interesting and we secured a good many species new to our collection.  Jungle fowl were abundant and pigeons exceedingly so, but we saw no ducks along the river and only two cormorants.