THE SACRED BIRD 93 



decorative figure as he moves slowly with deliberate 

 jetting gait, or stands at attention, the eared head and 

 shining neck raised and one foot lifted. Many a writer 

 has tried to paint him in words ; perhaps Ruskin alone 

 succeeds, in a passage which was intended to be de- 

 scriptive of the colouring of the pheasants generally. 

 *' Their plumage," he said, " is for the most part warm 

 brown, delicately and even beautifully spotty ; and in 

 the goodliest species the spots become variegated, 

 or inlaid as in a Byzantine pavement, deepening into 

 imperial purple and azure, and lighting into lustre of 

 innumerable eyes." 



But alas ! not infrequently when I have seen the 

 pheasant in that way in the coloured woods in October, 

 when after the annual moult his own colouring is 

 richest and he is seen at his best, my delight has 

 vanished when I have lifted my eyes to look through 

 the thinned foliage at the distant prospect of earth 

 and the blue overarching sky. For who that has 

 ever looked at nature in other regions, where this 

 perpetual hideous war of extermination against all 

 noble feathered life is not carried on, does not miss 

 the great soaring bird in the scene — eagle, or vulture, 

 or buzzard, or kite, or harrier — floating at ease on 

 broad vans, or rising heavenwards in vast and ever- 

 vaster circles ? That is the one object in nature which 

 has the effect of widening the prospect just as if the 

 spectator had himself been miraculously raised to a 

 greater altitude, while at the same time the blue dome 

 of the sky appears to be lifted to an immeasurable 



