AND NEIGHBOURHOOD. 293 



county, with its great woods interspersed with arable 

 lands, is well adapted to the requirements of the 

 Pheasant, and, with intelligent gamekeepers and 

 favourable seasons, we can hold our own in com- 

 parison with the bags of Pheasants made in similar 

 districts but not, of course, with those of Norfolk 

 and Suffolk, the whole of those counties being more 

 or less efficiently " preserved " for Pheasants, their 

 soil most favourable for feathered game, and the 

 natural enemies of game easily kept down. Although 

 it is now difficult to find pure-bred specimens of the 

 species whose name stands at the head of this article, 

 on account of the frequent crossings with the Chinese 

 Ring-necked Pheasant (Phasianus torquatus] and 

 other species, we do occasionally meet with birds, 

 especially in the large woodlands of the northern 

 division of Northamptonshire, which, by their small 

 size, the absence of any trace of the white collar, 

 which is so conspicuous in the Chinese bird, and the 

 intense blackness of the plumage of the lower belly, 

 present the characteristics of the true unadulterated 

 species. 



At Lilford we have very successfully introduced 

 the Ring-necked species, and still more so the Green 

 Pheasant of Japan (Phasianus versicolor), both of 

 which interbreed freely with our original stock and 

 with each other ; the hybrids are most beautiful 

 birds, greatly exceeding their parents in size and 

 weight, and certainly prolific, inter se, for some 

 generations. 



Gamekeepers do not much approve of the pure- 

 bred Chinese birds, as they are much given to 

 roaming far away from their homes, and from their 

 shy habits are not so easily brought to the gun as 

 the others. With regard to another most beautiful 



