CHAPTER VIII 



The Sacred Bird 



Phasianus Colchicus 



It was hardly necessary to add the scientific name 

 to any British species spoken of as " sacred." Cer- 

 tainly it is not the ibis and no mistake is possible 

 seeing that England is not ancient Egypt, or Hindustan, 

 or Samoa, or any remote barbarous land, where certain 

 of the creatures are regarded with a kind of religious 

 veneration. We call our familiar pheasant the sacred 

 bird to express condemnation of the persons who 

 devote themselves with excessive zeal to pheasant- 

 preserving for the sake of sport. 



To shoot a pheasant is undoubtedly the best way to 

 kill it, and would still be the best way — certainly better 

 than wringing its neck — even if these semi-domestic 

 birds were wholly domestic, as I am perfectly sure they 

 were in the time of the Romans who first introduced 

 them into these islands. I am sure of it because this 

 Asiatic ground-bird, which in two thousand years has 

 not become wholly native, and, as ornithologists say, 

 is in no sense an English bird, could not have existed 

 and been abundant in the conditions which prevailed 

 in Roman times. The fact that pheasant bones come 



8s 



