106 BRITISH BIRDS, THEIR EGGS AND NESTS. 
and the inconceivable vastness of the flocks in which they pass 
from one distant district to another in America. Here it is only 
a casual visitor, and can lawfully lay claim to none of our limited 
space. 
IT.— PHASTIANID&. 
151. PHEASANT—(Phasianus Colchicus). 
I dare say ‘“‘a good few” of our readers if they were asked 
“Do you know the Pheasant ?” might answer, “ Yes, very well. 
We had some for dinner, such and such a day.” And I have no 
doubt the acquaintance was satisfactory enough—at least to one 
of the parties. The Pheasant does not pair, and on the preserved 
estates in Norfolk and Cambridgeshire I have frequently seen in 
the spring large groups of Cock Pheasants collected and con- 
sorting together without the intermixture of a single hen. Ina 
vast many places now an artificial system of Pheasant-breeding 
is adopted, three or four hens with one male being turned into a 
large paled ‘ apartment,” well netted in, the whole establishment 
comprising many such apartments. Hach hen lays double or 
treble the number of eggs she would if suffered to run wild, and 
these are collected daily and placed under hens ready to sit as soon 
as a sufficient number is got together. In this way twice or 
three times the number of young ones is secured from one hen as 
compared with her own greatest success in bringing off a brood 
in the woods. In her wild state, the Pheasant makes scarcely 
any nest, on the ground, and lays ten or twelve eggs, of a uniform 
pale olive-brown shade. Not only are cases in which two Pheasants 
lay in the same nest of by no means unfrequent occurrence, but 
others even, in which Pheasants’ eggs have been found in Par- 
tridges’ nests. Many instances are on record of the Pheasant 
mter-breeding with other birds, such as the Guinea Fowl, the 
