2 ;o THE COMPLETE SHOT 



7 peacock pheasants and 4 Argus pheasants, which, like 

 many others amongst the 60 pheasants, do not fly well, and 

 have no place in shooting. The true pheasants are dis- 

 tinguished by their long wedge-shaped tails and by the absence 

 of a crest, but these have to be subdivided into the type birds 

 that are really only varieties, and the four that are really as 

 well as nominally different species. 



These four are Phasianns ellioti and Phasianus humi<z> which 

 are useless for sport. Then the copper pheasant from Japan 

 (Phasianus scemmerringi) Mr. Rothschild thinks eminently suited 

 for the coverts. As it is a native of the same ground as the 

 versicolor pheasant, and neither seems to damage the purity 

 of the other, it may be accepted that its production in our coverts 

 would not degenerate into crossing with the common pheasants. 

 The other of these four species is Ph. reevesii, or the Reeves 

 pheasant from China, with its 6 feet of length and, on rare 

 occasions, 6 feet of tail. The worst that has ever been said of 

 these two last-named species is that they fight badly and might 

 drive away the other pheasants, but in the case of the copper 

 pheasant the observation was only the outcome of its behaviour 

 in pens. Mr. Walter Rothschild thinks this bird more suitable 

 for mountainous cold districts than the common pheasant is, and 

 that it should be given the preference in Wales and Scotland, 

 as altogether a hardier bird than the true type pheasant. In 

 this opinion he agrees with the late Lord Lilford, who was 

 by far the best authority of his time. Mr. J. G. Millais wrote of 

 this bird from having shot it at Balmacaan, on Loch Ness, and at 

 Guisichan, near Beauly, in the same county. At the former, 

 then the late Lord Seafield's place, he found the bird a fraud 

 and a failure, as in the open flat coverts it ran more than it flew, 

 and when it was forced into the element it can make all its 

 own, it flew low and gave no sport. But at Guisachan, Lord 

 Tweedmouth's place, Mr. Millais had cause to regard the bird 

 as the finest of all the game birds that raced to the guns over 

 the mountain pines. He described it as leaving the common 

 pheasants and the blackcocks flustering along behind at about 

 half the pace of this king of the air, or comet of the woods. 



