THE COMMON PHEASANT. 157 



before or since seen a white pheasant. The three cocks 

 turned out never (to my knowledge or the keeper's) were the- 

 cause of white pheasants or pied pheasants being bred^ and 

 the three all disappeared in the second year. On another 

 part of my estate a white cock pheasant was bred ; he was 

 considered a sacred bird, and lived seven years, when he 

 disappeared. In the covert he resorted to I killed one pied 

 pheasant, and I believe that one bird was the only pied 

 pheasant (if bred through him) that ever was seen." By 

 careful breeding there is no doubt that a permanent white 

 race might be established if such a proceeding were thought 

 desirable, which I much doubt, as white varieties are 

 generally very deficient in hai'dihood. Left to them- 

 selves, the white cocks are doubtless driven away from 

 the hens by the stronger and more vigorous dark birds, 

 and rarely increase their kind. When mated in pheasantries 

 the natural colour has a strong tendency to reproduce itself ; 

 but white, or even pied or parti-coloured birds, are not always 

 to be produced from white parents, as the following letters 

 will show : — " On the manor of a friend in Yorkshire are a 

 cock and hen pheasant entirely and purely white. They 

 inhabit different woods, and are strenuously protected by the 

 head keeper, who considers their presence a proof of the- 

 integrity of his coverts, and invariably requests strangers to- 

 spare them. There are also a few ring-necks in the coverts, 

 which have bred so freely with the common sort that hardly 

 a cock pheasant is killed but shows some marks of white- 

 about his neck, while pied birds are so rare that the few 

 that have been shot have been preserved. If, then, white 

 pheasants breeding with ring-necks and other birds produced,, 

 as a rule, pied birds, why should there not have been every 

 year at least one brood of pied pheasants in these woods in 

 the same proportion as the half-bred ring-necks ? " Another 

 correspondent writes : — " A white hen was confined in the- 

 pheasantry here for some years with a common pheasant, but 

 of the progeny there was not one pied bird. A pied cock 



