PHEASANTS 



IT is not certain whether pheasants are indigenous to this 

 country. It is known that they were cultivated by the 

 Romans as domesticated or semi-domesticated birds, and as 

 remains of pheasants have been found in towns or camps of the 

 Romans in Britain, it is assumed that those people introduced 

 the birds into Britain. It will be observed that the idea rests 

 upon the fact that the pheasants were not indigenous to Italy. 

 But Italy is to Europe what India is to Asia, the most southerly 

 country, and pheasants do not like low latitudes. The races of 

 pheasant most allied to our own cross bred are found from Asia 

 Minor right across the Continent to Japan, and it is quite 

 possible that the Western race extended across Central Europe 

 to England. Obviously a strip of ocean is no bar in Asia, and 

 it is not likely to have been so in Europe, especially as it is 

 said that once the ocean did not flow between Britain and the 

 Continent. The first feast of English pheasants mentioned in 

 history occurred in the time of King Harold. The old English 

 pheasant, as we must call the bird which preceded by 1000 or 

 2000 or as many million years the introduction of the Chinese 

 race into England, was a red bird upon the back and the upper 

 tail coverts, and it had no white ring round its neck. The 

 Chinese pheasant, on the other hand, had the band of white and 

 greenish colouring on the back and upper tail coverts, and what 

 we have done by mixing green and red together is precisely 

 what an artist does with those two colours. He produces some 

 shade of neutral tint. Consequently, our cock pheasants are only 

 handsome from coloration in regard to the necks and heads 

 and the breasts, which the crossing has not damaged. The 



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