OCTOBER 237 



vaseline. Personally, I never used to eat pheasant 

 when there was a fair alternative ; now, I ask for no 

 more delicate food. It is devoutly to be hoped in the 

 interests of true sport that pheasant rearing will never 

 be resumed on the grossly exaggerated scale which it 

 had assumed before the war. Covert shooting had 

 degenerated to the ignoble level of competitive marks- 

 manship, retaining no trace of scientific woodcraft 

 except in the head keeper who marshalled the beaters, 

 and the shooters might have as well displayed their 

 skill and exerted the moderate energy required of them 

 in blazing at glass balls. But no fair objections can be 

 taken to the stock of wild birds being supplemented, were 

 it only with regard to the food supply, by a reasonable 

 number of pheasants reared at the coops. In any case, 

 where recourse is had to winter feeding in order to 

 keep the birds in the woods, it is highly desirable that 

 some substitute be found for Indian corn. 



Mr. William Beebe's sumptuous Monograph of the 

 Pheasants, recently published by Witherby and Co. in 

 four volumes elephant folio, comes to remind one of 

 the splendour displayed in the plumage of the male in 

 every species of the true pheasants and their allies, and 

 the extravagant contrast which it presents to the sober 

 attire of the hen birds. 1 It looks as if polygamy had 

 something to do with this. Gallinaceous birds that 

 pair, like the grouse and the partridge, exhibit but 

 slight difference in the plumage of the sexes ; whereas 

 among black-game, capercailzie, and pheasants, the 

 hens are discreetly arrayed in protective colouring. 



1 Mr. Beebe has not lived to see his fine work published. He met 

 a soldier's death in France. 



