34 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. 



edited by Beriah Botfield for the Roxburgh Club, wherein 

 (at p. 399), under the date of April, 1467, at Ipswich, there is 

 the entry : " Item xii. fesawntes pryse xii s ." He adds that 

 there is apparently no earlier mention of the pheasant in 

 Norfolk than some reference in the accounts of the 

 L'Estranges at Hunstanton in 1519, and the entry above 

 quoted is the earliest for Suffolk. Mr. Harting further 

 informs me that he has seen an ancient Psalter belonging to 

 Lord Aldenham, in which there is a very fair coloured 

 portrait of a cock pheasant, dated A.D. 1260. 



In Essex the pheasant is mentioned in a bill of fare, 

 A.D. 1059 (as already noticed), and this is apparently the 

 earliest allusion to the bird to be found in any part of 

 England. 



In Ireland, as stated by Thompson in his natural history 

 of that country (1850), "The period of its introduction is 

 unknown to me, but in the year 1589 it was remarked to be 

 common. " Fynes Moryson, who was in Ireland from 1599 to 

 1603, observes that there are " such plenty of pheasants as I 

 have known sixty served up at one feast, and abound much 

 more with rails, but partridges are somewhat scarce." 



In Scotland the pheasant does not appear to have been 

 preserved at a very early period. Mr. R. Gray, in his work 

 on " The Birds of the West of Scotland," says : " The first 

 mention of the pheasant in old Scotch Acts is in one dated 

 June 8, 1594, in which year a keen sportsman occupied the 

 Scottish throne." He might have been called fe James the 

 protector" of all kinds of game, as in the aforesaid year he 

 <e ordained that quhatsumever person or personnes at ony time 

 hereafter shall happen to slay deir, harts, pheasants, foulls, 

 partricks, or other wyld foule quhatsumever, ather with gun, 

 croce bow, dogges, halks, or girnes, or by uther ingine 

 quhatsumever, or that beis found schutting with ony gun 

 therein," &c., &c., shall pay the usual "hundreth punds," &c. 



The distribution of the pheasant over Great Britain and 

 Ireland at the present time is very general, it being found in 



