THE SACRED BIRD 85 



thousand years has not become wholly native, and, 

 as ornithologists say, is in no sense an English bird, 

 could not have existed and been abundant in the 

 conditions which prevailed in Roman times. The 

 fact that pheasant bones come next in quantity to 

 those of the domestic fowl in the ash and bone pits 

 examined by experts during the excavations at Sil- 

 chester shows that the bird was a common article 

 of food. The country about Silchester was a vast 

 oak forest at that period, probably very sparsely 

 inhabited; a portion of the forest exists to this day, 

 and is in fact one of my favourite haunts. The fox, 

 stoat, and sparrow-hawk were not the only enemies 

 of the pheasant then: the wolf existed, the wild cat, 

 the marten, and the foumart; while the list of rapa- 

 cious birds included the eagle, goshawk, buzzard, 

 kite, hen-harrier, peregrine falcon, and hobby, as 

 well as all the species which still survive, only in very 

 much larger numbers. Then there were the crows: 

 judging from the number of bones of the raven found 

 at Silchester we can only suppose that this chief 

 and most destructive of the Corvidae was a protected 

 species and existed in a semi-domestic state and was 

 extremely abundant in and round Calleva — probably 

 at all the Roman stations. It is probable that a few 

 tame pheasants escaped from time to time into the 

 woods, also some may have been turned out in the 

 hope that they would become acclimatised, and we 

 may suppose that a few of the most hardy birds sur- 

 vived and continued the species until later times; 

 but for hundreds of years succeeding the Romano- 



