THE SACRED BIRD 91 



being who injures us, must come in for something of 

 the feeling he inspires. There is always an overflow. 

 Personally I detest the sight of semi-domestic phea- 

 sants in the preserves; the bird itself is hateful, and 

 is the one species I devoutly wish to see exterminated 

 in the land. 



But when I find this same bird where he exists 

 comparatively in a state of nature, and takes his 

 chance with the other wild creatures, the sight of 

 him affords me keen pleasure: especially in October 

 and November when the change in the colour of the 

 leaf all at once makes this familiar world seem like 

 an enchanted region. We look each year for the 

 change and know it is near, yet when it comes it 

 will be as though we now first witnessed that mar- 

 vellous transformation — the glory in the high beechen 

 woods on downs and hillsides, of innumerable oaks 

 on the wide level weald, and elms and maples and 

 birches and ancient gnarled thorns, with tangle of 

 vari-coloured brambles and ivy with leaves like dark 

 malachite, and light green and silvery grey of old- 

 man's-beard. In that aspect of nature the pheasant 

 no longer seems an importation from some brighter 

 land, a stranger to our woods, startlingly unlike our 

 wild native ground-birds in their sober protective 

 colouring, and out of harmony with the surroundings. 

 The most brilliant plumage seen in the tropics would 

 not appear excessive then, when the thin dry leaves 

 on the trees, rendered translucent by the sunbeams, 

 shine like coloured glass, and when the bird is seen 

 in some glade or opening on a woodland floor strewn 



