Description
Excerpt from Preface: The study of the living pheasants in their natural environment in various parts of the Far East-this was the main object of the seventeen months’ journey through Asia and the East Indies taken by the author of this work. The urgency of this journey sprang from the fact that the members of this most beautiful and remarkable group of birds are rapidly becoming extinct, so that the record of their habits and surroundings, which is important to the understanding of their structure and evolution, will soon be lost forever…Nearly 100 species are included, and their voice, courtships, battles, nests and eggs, adn the general life history and relation to the surroundings, both human and animal, form the chief subject matter. The birds are illustrated in coloured plates by six of the leading American and English artists. The haunts of the pheasants are shown reproduced from the author’s photographs, ranging in scene from the slopes of the Himalayan snow peaks, sixteen thousand feet above the sea, to the tropical seashores of Java. Illustrators: H. Gronvold, G.E. Lodge, A. Thorburn, C.R. Knight
