324 Phasianidce. 



tion, as I have shown, this handsome species has not only 

 become in course of time thoroughly acclimatized, and capable 

 of enduring our most severe winters, but completely naturalized, 

 and able, when left to itself, to thrive and multiply in a wild 

 state in our woods. Though grain and seeds form its food in 

 winter, it feeds largely on insects and roots during the remainder 

 of the year ; but it is seldom considered in how great a degree 

 it compensates for the partial injury it causes by the undoubted 

 benefit it confers in thus ridding the land of noxious pests. I 

 do not of course allude to those cases where the species is en- 

 couraged to multiply to excess; when the balance of nature 

 being destroyed, confusion ensues as a necessity, as would be the 

 result in the unnatural multiplication of almost any species in 

 the whole animal kingdom. As a proof of its wholesale con- 

 sumption of injurious insects, I may mention that in the crop 

 of a cock Pheasant were found 852 larva? of tipulw, or ' crane 

 flies,' and from that of a hen Pheasant were taken no less than 

 1,225 of these destructive lame.* 



During winter the males congregate, but separate to their 

 several domains as spring draws on. Many sportsmen have 

 endeavoured to assign to a distinct species the Ring-necked, the 

 Bohemian, and the Pied varieties of this bird, but as these 

 variations are by no means permanent or hereditary, ornitho- 

 logists have wisely declined to admit them to any separate rank. 

 The Pheasant has an innate shyness or timidity, which nothing 

 seems able to overcome; though reared under a domestic hen, 

 and though fed from the hand from its earliest days, it never 

 attains confidence, but hurries to the shelter of thick cover at 

 the first symptom of alarm. Though it retires to roost on the 

 branches of trees, when once disturbed from the position it has 

 taken up it does not attempt to perch again during the re- 

 mainder of the night ; but on such occasions will crouch in the 

 longest grass and under the densest bramble it can find. It 

 crows, or ' chuckles,' on the least provocation, not only on retir- 

 ing to roost and at early dawn, but during the night as well as 

 c ' ' Science Gossip ' for 1884, p. 2G6. 



