10 LLOYD’S NATURAL HISTORY. 
duke or oily green, according to the way the skin is held. 
Most of the wing-coverts sandy-brown ; middle of breast and 
sides of belly dark purplish-green ; middle of belly and rest of 
under-parts dark brown mixed with rufous. ‘Tail-feathers olive 
down the middle, with zarrow, wide-set, black bars, and widely 
edged on each side with rufous, glossed with purplish-lake. 
Total length, 37-5 inches; wing, 1o'1 ; tail, 21°2; tarsus, 20; 
Adult Female—General colour sandy-brown, barred with 
black ; back and sides of the neck tinged with pinkish and 
with metallic purple or green margins; feathers of the mantle 
and sides of the breast and flanks chestnut, with black centres 
and pinkish-grey margins; an elongate patch of white black- 
tipped feathers below the eyes ; quills more coarsely barred and 
mottled with buff than in the male; tail-feathers reddish-brown 
down the middle, shading into sandy-olive on the sides and 
with wide irregular triple bars of black, buff, and black. ‘Total 
length, 24°5 inches; wing, 8°6; tail, 11°5 ; tarsus, 2°4. 
Range.— The Common Pheasant has been introduced in most 
parts of Europe, with the exception of Spain and Portugal, and 
the higher latitudes of Scandinavia and Russia. For this reason 
it is difficult, if not impossible, to state accurately the limits 
of its true home. It appears, however, to be found in a wild 
state in Southern ‘Turkey, Greece, and Asia Minor as far east 
as Transcaucasia, and it extends northwards tothe Volga. On 
the Island of Corsica it is also met with in a wild state, and 
may have been imported at some remote period; but if it is 
really indigenous there, its range must formerly have extended 
much farther west than the countries mentioned above. 
There is no record, as far as we know, of its importation to 
the British Islands, but it is mentioned in the bills-of-fare of 
the Saxon kings. 
Habits—The favourite home of the Pheasant is thick covert, 
woods with plenty of undergrowth, in the immediate neighbour- 
hood of cultivated land, where in the morning and evening the 
birds can come out to feed. Oak, hazel, and fir plantations 
