VARIETIES AND SPECIES OF THE 

 PHEASANT 



THERE are 21 so-called species of the true pheasant. Of 

 these, 17 are only varieties, with practically no 

 differences except in colour and size. Naturalists are not con- 

 sistent in their classifications. If the 17 pheasants that include 

 the common and the ring-necked variety are species, then 

 all our fancy pigeons are species also, just as our numberless 

 varieties of dogs are. The pouter and the fantail pigeons 

 have more differences by far than any of these 17 kinds of 

 pheasants, and the St. Bernard and the Japanese spaniel and 

 Italian greyhound would all have been received as new 

 species had their discoverers been naturalists. Indeed, the St. 

 Bernard has structural differences from the others about which 

 in any other class of animal naturalists would not hesitate for 

 a moment. They would make a species of him for his extra 

 toe that is, for his double dew claw. But it does not in the 

 least matter whether differences are marked in the index to 

 nature as species or as varieties, since the former term has 

 lost its original meaning, and no longer suggests a specific act 

 of creation in the origin of things. 



What matters is that the 17 varieties of pheasants are 

 supposed to be capable of breeding together fertile offspring, 

 no matter how they are mixed up. 



But although crossing always increases size in the first few 

 generations, and notwithstanding that every first cross amongst 

 these 17 varieties of pheasants has been glorified in description, 

 it is not to be expected that the cross breds maintain their 

 glory in later generations. Unfortunately, they do not revert 

 to one type or the other, but set up intermediate coloration. 



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