28 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. 



offered cautiously to them. They would fly up to the window, 

 and would feed in company with the common poultry, but if 

 anybody approached them unawares, off they went to the 

 nearest covert with surprising velocity ; they remained in it 

 till all was quiet, and then returned with their usual con- 

 fidence. Two of them lost their lives in the water by the 

 unexpected appearance of a pointer, while the barndoor fowls 

 seemed scarcely to notice the presence of the intruder ; the 

 rest took finally to the woods at the commencement of the 

 breeding season. This particular kind of timidity, which 

 does not appear in our domestic fowls, seems to me to oppose 

 the only, though at the same time an unsurmountable, bar 

 to our final triumph over the pheasant. After attentive 

 observation, I can perceive nothing else in the habits of the 

 bird to serve as a clue by which we may be enabled to trace 

 the cause of failure in the many attempts which have been 

 made to invite it to breed in our yards, and retire to rest with 

 the barndoor fowl and turkey." 



With regard to the date of the introduction of the 

 pheasant into England, there are no records whicii afford any 

 clue to the precise date when it was first brought to this 

 country ; and though probably its acclimatisation does not go 

 further back than the Norman Conquest, yet it is possible that 

 our Roman invaders may have imported it at a much earlier 

 period, with other imperial luxuries. 



Lord Lilford, in his " Notes ou the Birds of Northampton- 

 shire," writes : " There appears to be no reason to doubt that 

 the pheasant was introduced into England by the Romans, 

 and the bird has now become so spread over most parts of 

 Europe that it is almost impossible to say where it is really 

 indigenous." 



This suggestion is possibly near the truth, for the pheasant 

 has been shown by Prof. Boyd Dawkins to have been 

 naturalised in this country upwards of eight hundred years. 

 Writing in The His for 1869 (page 358), he observes: It 

 may interest your readers to know that the most ancient 



