THE COMMON PHEASANT. 153 



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) . 



Under 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, inas- 

 much as the 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. 



The following is Macgillivray's description of the two 

 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 



