INTRODUCTION INTO AMERICA. 39 



In Vancouver Island and some of tlie Gulf Islands 

 pheasants have become so numerous that complaints, according 

 to the official report, have been made to the Department of 

 Agriculture (1897) of the mischief they effect in grain and potato 

 fields, but the farmers generally speak favourably of them. 



In Oregon, where they were set at liberty in 1881, they 

 have now become common, and they have spread and multiplied 

 so well that complaints are made of their depredations in the 

 grain fields. The reports of the residents to the official 

 inquiries are very interesting. Mr. Tyler, of Forest Grove, 

 Oregon, writing in January, 1889, states : 



" The females produce fifteen to eighteen eggs each litter, 

 and hatch them all. . . . The old ones have lots of nerve, 

 and will fight a hawk or anything that comes near them. 

 The cocks will go into a barn yard and whip the best fowls we 

 have, and run things according to their own notion. . . 

 Their favourite haunts are low grounds near the fields 

 of grain, on which they depredate. . . . The golden 

 pheasants have become numerous. Occasionally one is seen 

 in our vicinity, about ninety miles from where they were 

 turned loose four years ago ; they are hardy, easily domesti- 

 cated, but not so prolific as the ring-necks. Their flesh is 

 white and tender." 



A very good idea of the manner in which these species 

 have succeeded in their new abode may be gathered from the 

 circumstance that the farmers are shooting them as a 

 nuisance, as they destroy the wheat. An interesting fact is 

 that the gold pheasant {Thaiimalea picta) — kept in England 

 only as an ornamental aviary bird — has become wild in 

 Oregon, and the Americans have found its flesh white and 

 tender. I have eaten gold pheasants that had run wild in 

 this country, and can fully indorse the statement. I have 

 often wondered that some landed proprietor, living in a 

 suitable locality bordering on woods and coverts, to whom 

 beauty was of the first consideration, had not attempted to 

 rear the gold pheasant in the open. The birds can be bred 



