This two-volume set by William Beebe is titled Pheasants: Their Lives And Homes, published in New York in 1931 under the auspices of the New York Zoological Society by Doubleday Doran, a second-edition set - the first edition was published in 1926 - with green cloth, gilt lettering on the spine, gilt lettering and a brass medallion on the front cover awarded to the author for his preeminence in Zoology or Paleontology, with blank endpapers, a colored frontispiece of a Kuser's Blood Pheasant, the title page, a three-page Preface, two pages of Contents, 34 Plates in color and in black-and-white in Volume I and 28 plates in Volumes II, a List of Illustrations after the Contents pages, and 257 pages of text in Volume I and 286 pages of text in Volume II. Volume II has two Appendices and a seven-page Index at the rear, for a total of 309 pages altogether in the second volume, and the set is a condensed version of the scarce four-volume set titled "A Monograph of the Pheasants" put out between 1918 and 1922. (That set goes for a solid four figures.) William Beebe (1877 - 1962) was an American naturalist, ornithologist, marine biologist, and entomologist who conducted numerous expeditions for the New York Zoological Society, and these expeditions formed the basis for his prolific scientific writing for academic and popular audiences. He was also a major advocate of conversation and was remembered for several theories he proposed about avian evolution which are now considered well ahead of their time, particularly his 1915 hypothesis that the evolution of bird flight passed through a four-winged or "Tetrapteryx" stage, which has been supported by the discovery of Microraptor gui in 2003. The books are 8vo. and measure 10 1/2 x 8 in. wide, with tight bindings, the plates and pages in Volume I are exceptionally clean and Volume II has a couple of pages and plates with light brown spots, but most of the pages and plates are pretty clean. There is light browning on the frontispiece and light offset on the title page of Volume II and light speckles on the rear endpapers in that volume. The spines are slightly faded, with slight bumps on the crown in Volume I and bumps on the heel and crown in the second volume. There are spots on the back cover of the first volume and a couple of scratches and very light spots on the covers and spine of the second volume, a small hole on the spine of the second volume and a small crease or dent on a tip of both volumes, and still a great classic that would make a good gift for a hunter or naturalist. #125 #1663