BRITISH SPORT PAST AND PRESENT 



by men and dogs in his rear, has determined on a bold dash 

 for it. The well-known whirr of his wings sets half-a-dozen 

 more in motion. The pheasants are rising all round you. 

 " Don't leg 'em," bellows some one. " Well missed," 

 cries another. " Come on, sir," says the keeper ; " better have 

 this bit out again — there 's a lot gone back." 



' Perhaps, three or four times in the course of the day, the 

 monotonous chant of the beaters will be varied by unearthly 

 shrieks of excitement, out of which is gradually evolved the 

 great fact of " cock — forward " — the simple meaning being 

 that a woodcock has been marked down in front of us. Not a 

 man of the party but would cheerfully pay down a sovereign 

 to bag him. Whereabouts was it, asks every man with a gun, 

 of every man with a stick, in an undertone, hoping that he 

 himself may obtain some exclusive information. " Oh, he 

 beant far off, sir ! " is the usual answer on such occasions. 

 " Just where us be now, a little bit further on, I thinks, sir." 

 At that moment, very likely, the bird gets up half-a-dozen 

 yards behind the whole party, dodges sharply between two 

 trees, wheels out of the covert, and is brought down, a long 

 shot, with a broken wing, by one of the outsiders. Just your 

 luck, you think.' 



This from Daniel (1813) is interesting : — 



' There is a beautiful variety of the Pheasant with a white 

 ring round the neck ; of these the Earl of Berkeley has a 

 considerable quantity at Cranford Bridge : except the white 

 neck feathers they appear in size, and the rest of their plumage, 

 exactly to resemble the common.' 



P. colchicus has almost reached the status of a ' beautiful 

 variety ' in our day ! 



P. torquatus must be, on the average, a good deal heavier 

 than the old Enghsh bird of a century ago. Daniel in the 

 supplementary volume of Rural Sports (1813) says : ' An un- 

 common sized Pheasant was shot in January 1810, in the 

 Plantations belonging to E. L. Irton, Esq., near Whitehaven, 

 which weighed fifty-six ounces, and measured, from the Bill 



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