308 BIRDS OF SOMERSETSHIRE. 
the same as in the adult.” I have a young bird of 
the year in my collection, shot on the lst of Sep- 
tember, which differs from this description, as there 
is one row of the black and white feathers on the 
side of the neck making its appearance, and many of 
the wing-coverts are the same as in the adult. 
The bird is the smallest of British Pigeons, and 
the egg is the smallest of our Pigeon’s eggs, but 
otherwise, like them, quite white. 
Family PHASIANIDa. 
Common Pueasant, Phasianus colchicus. The 
Common Pheasant, as its Latin name imports, is an 
inhabitant of Colchis, in Asia Minor, and of the 
country about the river Phasis, whence it was 1m- 
ported into Europe (for there is no native Euro- 
pean Pheasant), in very early times, it is said, by 
Jason and the Argonauts; and it may have been so 
—at all events, the theory is as good as any other: 
from Greece it was imported into Italy, and carried 
by the Romans into many countries in Europe and 
probably into England, although we do not hear of it 
here till the reign of Edward the First, in the twenty- 
seventh year of whose reign (A. D. 1299) the price of 
a Pheasant was said to be fourpence, of a Mallard 
three half-pence, a Plover one penny, and of a couple 
of Woodcocks three half-pence; and Richard the 
Second’s cook, who wrote a sort of cookery-book, 
