OCTOBER 241 



freely, leaked into the coverts of his neighbours, 

 where they were not universally welcome, owing to the 

 erroneous belief entertained by most gamekeepers that 

 they are pugnacious and disturb the common pheasants. 

 Hearing that one gentleman had ordered the golden 

 pheasants in his woods to be destroyed as vermin, 

 I begged for a few of them, chiefly, I confess, with a 

 view to the furnishing of salmon flies. These birds, 

 having been released in our own woods, have made 

 themselves perfectly at home, and have so greatly 

 propagated their kind that their progeny have to be 

 kept in check by shooting a few from time to time. 

 I have never seen them on the table, though they are 

 reported to be very good food; but the carcase is 

 ridiculously small under the prodigal finery that 

 envelopes it hardly as big as a partridge's and the 

 reverse of plump. 



More chaste in colouring than the plumage of the 

 golden pheasant and no less charming is that of 

 the Amherst pheasant (Thaumalea or Chrysolophus 

 Amherstice), so named after Countess Amherst, wife of 

 the Governor-General of Bengal (1822-28). But alas ! 

 the two species must not be liberated on the same 

 ground; not because they disagree with each other; 

 on the contrary, they consort only too well, making 

 up their harems indiscriminately from each other's 

 offspring. The resulting hybrids are fertile and almost 

 invariably inferior in beauty to both the pure races. 



