44 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. 



apparently the principal produce, and forming, with the 

 berries of the privet (which abounds throughout Albania) the 

 chief food of the present species. We heard many more 

 pheasants than we saw, as the woods were thick and of great 

 extent, our dogs wild, and we lost a great deal of time in 

 making circuits to cross or avoid the numerous small but 

 deep streams which intersect the country in every direction. 

 This species is particularly abundant on the shores of the 

 Gulf of Salonica, about the mouth of the river Vardar ; and 

 I have been informed, on good authority, that pheasants are 

 also to be found in the woods of Yhrakori, in ^Etolia, about 

 midway between the gulfs of Lepanto and Arta." With 

 regard to the present distribution of the species, Mr. Gould, 

 in his " Birds of Asia," states that the late Mr. G. T. Vigne 

 shot it in a wild state at the Lake of Apollonia, thirty-five miles 

 from Broussa, to the south of the sea of Marmora, and that 

 the late Mr. Atkinson found it on the Kezzil-a-Gatch and the 

 country to the west of the river Ilia. Mr. C. G. Danford, in 

 his notes on the ornithology of Asia Minor, writes : " The 

 English Consul, Mr. Gilbertson, informed us that pheasants, 

 though generally becoming scarce, were still common near Lake 

 Apollonia, where a couple of guns had last year killed over 

 sixty head in two or three days' shooting." (Ibis, 1880, 

 p. 98.) 



Lord Lilford, writing in 1895, states : "The only country 

 in which we have personally met with it in an unpreserved 

 and perfectly wild state is on the shores of the Adriatic, near 

 Alessio, in Albania, where it is, or was, by no means uncommon 

 in the low-lying forest country near the mouth of the river 

 Drin ; it is also to be found in considerable numbers near 

 Salonica and in certain other localities in European Turkey. 

 But the best authorities seem to agree that the true home and 

 headquarters of the species are the shores of the Caspian, the 

 valleys of the Caucasus, and Northern Asia Minor. Very 

 closely allied forms, however, are to be met with from the 

 Caspian, through Asia, to the shores and islands of China." 



