40 LLOYD’S NATURAL HISTORY. 
badly placed, for I could not see where the game could be. Up 
got six Reeves’s Pheasants, splendid birds. I felt certain of 
two, but I am sorry to say that I only succeeded in bagging 
one, which went rolling down the hill in his last struggles. I 
bounded after him, afraid the dog would mouth his beautiful 
plumage. The bird I had bagged was a cock, measuring five 
feet four inches from the bill to end of the tail-feathers. From 
the time I first came on their scent, the distance over which I 
had worked must have been a mile.” 
Reeves’s Pheasant has at various times been turned down on 
some of the large sporting properties in Great Britain, but it 
cannot be considered a success, for the males drive away 
the Common and Ring-necked Pheasants and do not inter- 
breed freely with either species. 
A pair of these birds was received by Lord Tweedmouth 
(then Sir Dudley Marjoribanks) from Pekin in 1870, and turned 
out at Guisachen, Inverness-shire, where the breed was suc- 
cessfully maintained for some years, fresh blood being sub- 
sequently introduced by the acquisition of four additional 
male birds. Lord Ravensworth makes the following remarks 
on the habits of this species as observed by Lord ‘Tweedmouth 
in Inverness-shire :—“ The Bar-tail is a true Pheasant, well able 
to take care of himself in any climate, at any altitude, and is 
more easily reared than the common species. He is very shy 
and wild, difficult to approach, and takes to his legs long 
before other Pheasants are conscious of any danger. His 
flight is prodigiously rapid and siraight, and he will travel 
thirty miles on end, which, of course, is an objectionable 
practice, except in such extensive forest grounds as the high- 
lands of Scotland present. ‘These Pheasants travel in troops 
of fifteen or twenty, and present a grand and bewildering effect 
when they rise insuch a company. Any attempt to walk up to 
them in brush covert is utterly hopeless, for they are exceed 
ingly vigilant and go straight off like a dart, not more than 
six feet from the ground, far out of reach. 
