THE SACRED BIRD 85 



themselves witli excessive zcnl to plic.isnnt-prcscrvinp 

 for the sake of sport. 



To shoot a pheasant is undoubtedly the best way to 

 kill it. and would still he the best way — certainly better 

 than wrinj^nnj,' its neck — even if these semi-domestic 

 birds were wholly domestic, as I am perfectly sure they 

 were in the time of the Romans who first introduced 

 them into these islands. I am sure of it because this 

 Asiatic ground-l)ird, which in two thousand years has 

 not become wholly native, and. as ornithologists say, 

 is in no sense an English bird, C(Xild not have existed 

 and been abundant in the conditions which prevailed 

 in Roman times. The fact tiiat pheasant bones come 

 next in quantity to those of the domestic fowl in the 

 ash and bone pits examined by experts during the ex- 

 cavations at Silchester shows that the bird was a common 

 article of food. The country about Silchester was a 

 vast oak forest at that period, probablv 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 sparrowhawk were not the only enemies of 

 the pheasant then; the wolf existed, the wild cat, the 

 marten, and the foumart; while the list of rapacious 

 birds included the eagle, goshawk, buzzard, kite, hen- 

 harrier, peregrine falcon, and h(jbby, 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 tlie corvida; was a protected species and existed in 



