540 THE COMMON PHEASANT. 



Family II. 



PHASIANID.E. Vigors. 



The members of this family are well marked. Their short, 

 concave wings unfit them for long flight, but this is counter- 

 balanced by their muscular legs for running and scraping for 

 food. They have a crop in which their food is macerated 

 before entering their stomach. Some are polygamous, others 

 pair. Their nest is on the ground amidst herbage ; eggs 

 numerous ; when hatched, the young are covered with down, at 

 once able to feed themselves. What a difference to young 

 humanity ! " Mewling and pucking in the nurse's arms," " and 

 then the whining schoolboy creeping like a snail unwillingly to 

 school," as Shakespeare in his Seven Ages has it. We have only 

 one species in Britain, the common pheasant, which, although 

 originally a native of Asia, has been so long naturalised as to 

 rank in our Fauna, in Genus Phasianus of Linnaeus. 



GENUS— PHASIANUS. (Linn.) 



The Common Pheasant. 



Phasianus Colchicus. {Linn.) 



" Jog on, jog on, the footpath-way, 

 And merrily hent the stile-a ; 

 A merry heart goes all the day — 

 Your sad tires in a mile-a." — The Winter's Tale. 



This bird is the beauty of the game preserve, without which, 

 I fear, like the bustard, it would soon become extinct in 

 Eritain, and left to thrive in its native wilds of Asia, for even 

 as late as Shakespeare's time the pheasant was likened to a 

 courtier — in the game preserve of Royalty, for when the rogue 

 Autolycus (in " The Winter's Tale") meets the clown and 



