Page:Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet vol 2 (1876).djvu/268

244 Polygonatum roseum, Thermopsis, Podophyllum, and others.

Animal life too displayed full activity, especially among the feathered visitants of the forest zone, where the voices of song-birds sounded in concert, completing the general picture of spring. The exquisite melody of the thrush, and of its congeners the Pterorhinus Davidii and Trochalopteron, the note of the cuckoo, the call of the pheasant, and of a variety of smaller birds, resounded unceasingly for days together. Even at night time, in calm weather, some might be heard too impatient to restrain their songs till daybreak. Indeed everything around gave signs of returning life and activity after the long winter's silence.

Every day we obtained a number of most interesting specimens, and made up for the poor ornithological collection of the preceding summer when most of the birds were moulting.

Amongst the rarer kinds we secured some specimens of the long-eared pheasant (Crossoptilon auritum), which we had seen the first year of our travels in the mountains of Ala-shan. This remarkable bird, called by the Tangutans shiarama, inhabits in large numbers the forest-covered mountains of Kan-su, but is never found in the treeless ranges of Northern Tibet. It prefers forests on the sides of rocky mountains, and abounding in underwood, at an absolute elevation of 10,000 feet. It feeds exclusively on vegetable matter, and I found nothing but young grass, the buds and leaves of the barberry, and roots of