218 THEASANT. 



come into a lonely barn-yard, where there was no house, and where 

 no labourers were at work, but where there were fowls. And he 

 has known a cock pheasant to come early every morning in the 

 breeding season to this barn-yard, and crow, often sitting on one 

 of the hovels. And it is said a cock pheasant would beat a game 

 cock, if unarmed with those barbarous weapons, steel spurs. If this 

 be true, he would, of course, be more than a match for a dunghill 

 cock. And as this superior prowess would enable him to defend his 

 own seraglio from the violations of chanticleer, if attempted in his 

 presence, so it would enable him more easily to invade that of his 

 neighbour. 



<f Note. White pheasants are seldom perfectly white, but are 

 usually mottled, or variegated, or, as they are generally called, pied. 

 When they are entirely white, the impression on the hen pheasant 

 must be of the strongest and most perfect kind. But when they 

 are pied, it is suggested, rather that the impression was not so 

 strong and perfect, than that the impression was made by mottled 

 or variegated fowls. 



" With respect to the brown sheep mentioned in the contract be- 

 tween Jacob and Laban, it may be remarked, that as white is the 

 natural colour of that animal, so the brown sheep may be to the 

 white one what the white fowl is to the brown pheasant, the hen 

 pheasant, at least, being of that colour. 



" Here it may be added, that the fowl being about the size of 

 the pheasant, and in its general form bearing some resemblance to 

 it, so this general resemblance, in any other respect, will render its 

 peculiarity, in point of colour, so much the greater deformity. Fowls, 

 too, when they stray from the farm-yard into the fields to feed, and 

 pheasants, when they leave the coppices and hedgerows for the same 

 purpose, prowl and feed, both of them, in the same manner. And 

 while other birds are continually on the wing from place to place, and 

 seldom remain long on a spot, the pheasant rarely rises unless dis- 

 turbed, and is much more still and stationary. The pheasant, if 

 undisturbed, continues in the same neighbourhood, particularly in 

 the breeding season. Fowls, when they stray, since they cannot go 

 far, must frequent the same fields; and as the pheasant from its 

 habits is likely to meet them, and to remain with them, it is liable 

 not only to a more durable impression, but subject to a greater ex- 

 posure to that impression. And it is, perhaps, from these causes 

 that there are a greater number of white pheasants than white 



