Pheasants and Hungarians 123 



European preserves, with a certain admixture of north Asiatic species, imported 

 either direct, or via the wild populations of the Northwest. The stock is so 

 thoroughly hybridized, and came from so many different places, through such a 

 long period of years, that it seems almost inconceivable that the zone of failure 

 in the south part of the region should have received a stock materially different 

 from that in the zone of success. If this is true, then the cause of pheasant 

 failure cannot lie primarily in different stock. 



The Hungarian stock planted in the north central region came mostly from 

 various parts of southeastern Europe. It is quite possible that the stock imported 

 in a certain year differed in geographic origin from that imported at some other 

 time. Geographic origins could doubtless be run down by analyzing the records 

 of importers. Long confinement in shipment is also well known to have pro- 

 duced various degrees of debilitation in Hungarian stock. In some of the States 

 like Ohio, however, Hungarian plantings have been repeated through a long 

 series of years, during which time geographic origins doubtless changed and de- 

 bilitation varied, but behavior of plantings did not. It therefore seems improbable 

 that the reason for failure of Hungarians lies primarily in the character or condi- 

 tion of the stock. 



It seems certain that improper release, lack of care, and illegal shooting has 

 been responsible for the failure of many plants of both species. It seems almost 

 impossible, however, that these human deficiencies should be distributed in solid 

 zones and hold consistently through a period of 30 years. Both human indivi- 

 duals and local human populations certainly differ in the skill and care with 

 which they plant birds, and in the degree to which they observe the laws pro- 

 tecting them. A map of these differences, however, would certainly show a shot- 

 gun pattern, not a pair of roughly parallel zones extending across a third of the 

 continent. Skill, care, and law observance are not a property of the northern, 

 nor are the opposite qualities a property of the southern populations in this 

 region. For this reason the skill, care and protection of plants may be dismissed 

 as a primary cause of the phenomenon here in question. 



Kinds of Environmental Defects. This disposes of the first and third 

 possible causes. The remaining possible cause, namely, the environment in which 

 the plants were made, may be sub-divided into three kinds of factors: 



(a) Temporary factors (such as unfavorable weather) . 



(b) Visible factors (such as kind and amount of cover, food, predators, 

 etc.). 



(c) Invisible factors (such as diseases, parasites, quality of food, etc.). 



Temporary weather conditions may be dismissed for the same reason as 

 illegal shooting and other human deficiencies. The laws of chance would not sub- 

 ject a thousand southern plantings scattered over a score of years to unfavorable 

 weather, and a thousand northern ones to the opposite kind of weather. This 

 process of elimination brings us down to the probable meat of the question, 

 namely, the visible and invisible characters of the environment. 



