168 Mr. H. Seobohm on 



plaintive call of three or four notes, and warbles in a sort 

 of undertone, like others of this family ; but I never heard 

 it sing with a rich full tone like T. canorum, some of which 

 are its companions. 



XVII. — On Phasianus colchicus and its Allies. 

 By Henry Seebohm. 



There is a great deal of truth in the old saw which says 

 that " it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good." England 

 and Russia quarrelled over the line which divides Afghanistan 

 from Turkestan. Some millions sterling were spent in con- 

 sequence, a deputation from the two countries met in the 

 basin of the Murghab, and discovered a new subspecies of 

 Pheasant. Ornithologists ought to be the last to quote 

 "parturiunt montes/' and will agree with me that the English 

 proverb is much more to the point. Any discovery which 

 throws light upon the difficult question of the inter-relation- 

 ship of the Pheasants is valuable. 



The fact that all the true Pheasants interbreed freely with 

 each other and produce fertile offspring, may be accepted as 

 absolute proof that they are only subspecifically distinct from 

 each other. Like all other subspecies, they only exist upon 

 sufferance. The local races appear to be distinct enough, 

 but they only retain their distinctive characters so long as 

 they are isolated from each other. The moment they are 

 brought into contact they begin to interbreed; crosses of every 

 kind rapidly appear, and in a comparatively short time the 

 swamping effects of interbreeding reduce the two or more 

 local races which have been brought into contact to a single 

 and uniform intermediate race. Such swamping effects of 

 interbreeding have practically stamped out in the British 

 Islands the two very different-looking races of Pheasants 

 which were introduced into them — Phasianus colchicus, from 

 Asia Minor, and Phasianus torquatus from China. The 

 Pheasant of the British Islands is, with very rare exceptions, 

 only a mongrel between these two races, but, it must be 

 admitted, a very healthy and fertile one. 



