162 PHEASANTS FOR COVERTS AND AVIARIES. 



In the district of the Humber we were informed by the 

 late Mr. John Cordeaux that " the pure old breed untainted 

 by any cross is now seldom to be met with, excepting in a few 

 localities furthest removed from the great centres of game 

 preserving. With these few exceptions, our resident birds 

 are a mixed race, exhibiting in a greater or less degree the 

 cross between the old English bird and the Ring-neck 

 (P. torquatus)." This statement is equally true of all the 

 well-preserved districts of England, in many of which the 

 varieties are still more complex in consequence of the intro- 

 duction of the Japanese species (P. versicolor), and more 

 recently of the Mongolian (P. mongolicus) . 



In these circumstances, I have thought it desirable to 

 quote the description of the common pheasant from the first 

 volume of Macgillivray's " British Birds," 1837, inasmuch as 

 that author's descriptions are unrivalled for their accuracy and 

 attention to detail, and at the date at which it was published 

 the common species had not in Scotland been crossed with 

 any of the more recent importations. 



Macgillivray thus describes the sexes of P. colchicus : 



" Male. The legs are stronger; the tarsi, which are stout 

 and a little compressed, have about seventeen plates in each 

 of their anterior series. The first toe, which is very small, 

 has five, the second twelve, the third twenty-two, the fourth 

 nineteen scutella. The spur on the back of the tarsus is 

 conical, blunt, and about a quarter of an inch long. 



" The feathers of the upper part of the head are oblong 

 and blended, of the rest of the head and the upper part of 

 the neck imbricated and rounded, of the fore-neck and breast 

 broad, slightly emarginate or abruptly rounded ; of the back 

 broad and rounded, of the rump elongated, with loose 

 filaments; of the sides very long, of the abdomen downy, 

 of the legs soft and rather short. Directly over the aperture 

 of the ear is a small erectile tuft of feathers. The wings 

 are short, very broad, curved, rounded, of twenty-four quills ; 

 the primaries attenuated from near the base, rounded, the 



