342 PHASIANID^. 



hard winters the supply diminishes, or fails altogether ; 

 and were not food specially scattered about for it in its 

 haunts, it would either die off from being unable to with- 

 stand cold and hunger together, or become so weak that it 

 would fall a prey to the smaller rapacious animals, who 

 are not a match for it when it is strong and active. A 

 healthy cock Pheasant has been known to beat off a cat ; 

 a sickly one would be unable to compete with a magpie or 

 jay. It is, in fact, an exotic running wild, and enabled to 

 do so only by the care of those who help it to surmount 

 the inconveniences of a life spent in a foreign land. 



The Pheasant is said to have been brought originally 

 from Colchis, a country on the shores of the Black Sea, 

 and to have derived its name from the river Phasis, the 

 famous scene of the expedition of the Argonauts, bearing 

 date about 1200 years before Christ. From this epoch it 

 is said to have been known to the Athenians, who en- 

 deavoured to acclimatize it for the sake of its beauty as 

 well as the delicacy of its flesh. The Eomans received it 

 from the Greeks ; but it was little known, except by name, 

 in Germany, France, and England, until the Crusades. 

 The custom was then introduced from Constantinople of 

 sending it to table decorated with its tail-feathers and 

 head, as a dish for kings and emperors — a special honour 

 until that time confined to the Peacock. Willughby, in 

 the seventeenth century, says of it that, from its rarity, 

 delicacy of flavour, and great tenderness, it seems to have 

 been created for the tables of the wealthy. He tells us, 

 too, that the flesh of Pheasants caught by hawking is of a 

 higher flavour, and yet more delicate than when they are 

 taken by snares or any other method. 



The kings of Franco greatly encouraged the natural- 

 ization of the Pheasants in the royal forests, both as 

 an object of sport and as an acquisition to the festive 

 board, and were imitated by the nobles and superior 

 clergy. In the fourteenth century, all the royal forests, 



