THE PHEASANT. 401 
the breeding season, when the male birds select their mates, for they 
are polygamous. On these occasions they engage in such desperate 
conflicts that the weaker bird is often killed. 
The hen Pheasant makes her nest on the ground, in the midst of 
a thicket, or in a tuft of grass, and lays from twelve to twenty eggs, 
which require twenty-four days to hatch. 
The mother does not manifest that care and solicitude for her 
young which are so marked a characteristic of the majority of other 
birds ; she does not even specially recognise her own progeny, for 
she pays equal attention to all the young of her race that surround 
her. We must not, however, expect to find much maternal love in a_ 
bird which will break her own eggs to gratify an unnatural appetite. 
The Pheasant, although wary, is at times unaccountably stupid ; 
thus it falls an easy victim to the poacher. 
Although they breed in a wild state in our climate, Pheasants 
are principally raised in enclosures called pheasantries, where all the 
necessaries to existence are provided for them. As the females are 
bad mothers, it is not unusual for their eggs to be hatched by domestic 
fowls. During the first two months of existence the young pheasants 
require the greatest care, for they are predisposed to numerous 
maladies. Ants’ eggs are their favourite food. 
The flesh of the mature bird is very savoury, but rather dry ; and 
epicures consider that it ought not to be eaten till hung a long time, 
and become “high,” a requisite considered necessary with the 
majority of game. ‘There is one very curious peculiarity common 
to, certain birds belonging to the family of which we have been 
speaking, and which is especially remarkable in the Pheasants—it 
is that when old females become unfruitful they assume the plumage 
of males. It is said that young Pheasants undergo the same change 
when deprived of their reproductive organs. 
The Golden Pheasant (Phasianus pictus, PLavE XIX.) and the 
Silver Pheasant (P. xychthemerus), are two beautiful birds, originally 
from China and Japan, and now naturalised to Europe. The former, 
clothed in purple and gold, bears a golden-yellow tuft on its head ; 
the black-and-white costume of the latter is not inferior in beauty to 
the preceding. Linnzeus has named them WVychthemerus (the night 
and the day). There are also the Ring-necked or Collared Pheasant, 
slightly different from the Common Pheasant, which for some years 
has propagated rapidly in France and England.* Reeves’s Pheasant, 
indigenous to China, where it is rather rare, and very highly prized 
* This species is originally from China, where I have frequently shot them. 
In their native haunts they are larger than the semi-domesticated bird.—Ep. 
