34 PHEASANTS 



downwards, where a Reeves would set his 

 face for his native hill. 



His legs are strong and muscular as 

 befits a bird who seeks his food, nests, 

 and rears his young on the ground, with 

 strong blunt claws well adapted for 

 scratching in the earth, in which character- 

 istic, as in many others, the pheasant 

 betrays his kinship with the common hen 

 of our poultry yards, from which, however, 

 he differs markedly in his impatience of 

 any attempts to make him share the life 

 of man in complete domestication. 



The wild jungle fowl, common parent 

 of all our fancier's strains from Brahmas 

 to Bantams, may be thoroughly tamed in 

 a single generation, but though the 

 pheasant from close and long-continued 

 association may often acquire the famili- 

 arity that borders on contempt with the 

 ways of man, yet the wild instinct is never 

 more than dormant, and after generations 

 of aviary life, the desire to go his own 

 way through the world remains the birth- 

 right of each individual. 



