=^^ 



71 



New Jersey State Game Farm. 



visit I will show you our Mongolian cocks, and I think you will say 

 they beat the ringneck. 

 Mr. Ralph H. Sidway writes me as follows concerning the Mongolians 

 he is using on his estate near Buffalo: 



I imported Mongolians this year because they are larger, 

 finer birds and wilder than ringnecks. I think they will make better 

 birds to stock the covers with. I bought these birds in England 

 after you were down at our farm and they arrived rather late for 

 this year, but we had fair luck raising them and hope next year to 

 raise a great many. I intend to breed them pure. The only indi- 

 viduals we will cross will be the wild birds. All else will be pure 

 blood. There are quite a few wild ringnecks around our land 

 now and they will mix up with the Mongolians, but I hope event- 

 ually to breed all pure Mongolians. 



VERSICOLOR. — Of the representative and widely scattered number 

 of breeders of game included in the American Game Protective Associa- 

 tion's 1915 census but one mentions the versicolor, or Japanese pheasant. 

 The sole exception is the State of Massachusetts, which is merely experi- 

 menting with it on a small scale. Yet the versicolor is one of the keenest 

 and most attractive of the true pheasants and it occurs in the wild in 

 large numbers in Great Britain. In that country it has freely interbred 

 with the common and Chinese pheasants, the mixed progeny being fertile, 

 and, according to Tegetmeier, "the effect of this introduction of foreign 

 blood into English coverts has been amazing, producing an increase in 

 size and vigor, and beautiful variations in the plumage, dependent on the 

 species whose blood predominates in the cros§," 



