Pheasants and Hungarians 111 



Straggling Failure of Hungarians. Alfred L. Harder, of Vernon, In- 

 diana, and John Greyerson told me that a few of the original Hungarian plant- 

 ings (probably meaning the State plantings of 1910) had survived until 1917, 

 during which year a few birds were seen east of Old Vernon. There are none 

 left now except a single bird flushed while training quail dogs in Jefferson 

 County. 



Oliver Neal, game warden on the Brown County Refuge near Nashville 

 (south central), Indiana, told me that the original plantings of Hungarians (prob- 

 ably meaning 1910) did well for a while; that they lived in the hills near fields. 

 He had seen none since 1926. 



John A. Gude of Bruceville, Knox County, Indiana, said: 



"I saw 10 or 12 Huns in the spring of 1928 on Emerson Prairie, but none 

 since." 



These were probably straggling remnants of the original Indiana plantings 

 of 190810 or, more probably, of the Lawrence County, Illinois, plantings of 

 1924. 



Howard L. Hancock, an attorney and sportsman of Rockville, Parke County 

 (west central), Indiana, said: 



"The Huns are all gone. They did well for 5 years, but I think they were 

 wound up by the hard winter of 1917-18." 



He evidently refers to the wholesale plantings of 1908-10. It should be 

 noted that the hard winter in question did not materially damage the successful 

 plantings of the same year in northeast Indiana. 



H. H. Hicks of Lawrenceville, Illinois, said: 



"About 50 Huns were planted here 15 years ago when Wheeler was com- 

 missioner and Deneen was governor. I never heard of but one brood, which re- 

 sulted in a covey on which I trained my dogs. At the end of a year, however, 

 the birds were all gone." 



Straggling Followed by Dispersal. Some of the accounts of strag- 

 gling Hungarians may be interpreted as straggling followed by dispersal. This 

 combination of the two types of failure, however, is most clearly recorded in 

 pheasants. Widmann's "Birds of Missouri" quotes a letter from George H. Mc- 

 Cann, of Springfield, describing a plant of 400 pheasants (part English, part 

 Mongolian) made on his preserve in Taney County in 1907, or possibly 1906. 

 In addition to these imported birds, 32 pheasants raised locally by hand were 

 also liberated. Mr. McCann describes the result as follows: 



"Several covies were raised on or about the preserve, but they leave after the 

 first frost . . . where, I know not. I have labored with them for the past 10 

 years . . . but feel that I have made a complete failure." 



The remainder of Mr. McCann's letter clearly describes sudden dispersal in 

 the fall after a successful initial nesting period. His language clearly implies that 



