CHAPTER II. 
NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PHEASANTS (CONTINUED). 
NON-DOMESTICITY—INTRODUCTION INTO 
BRITAIN—DISTRIBUTION. 
fata of the pheasant, that it might be domesticated and reared like 
ey our ordinary farmyard fowl. Such persons are apparently not 
ol oe aware that the instinct of domestication is one of the rarest 
bi possessed by animals. Man has been for some thousands of 
years capturing, subduing, and taming hundreds of different species 
of animals of all classes; but of these, the number that he has 
succeeded in really domesticating does not amount to fifty. A very 
large proportion of animals are capable of being tamed, and rendered 
perfectly familiar with man; but that is a totally distinct state from one of 
domestication. The common pheasant is a good example of this distinction. In- 
dividual examples may be rendered so tame as to become even troublesome from 
their courage and familiarity; but although others have been bred in aviaries 
for scores of generations, their offspring still retain their original wildness, and 
when let out at large betake themselves to the woods and coverts as soon as able 
to shift for themselves. On the other hand, the allied species, the jungle fowl 
(Gallus bankiva), the original of our domestic breeds of poultry, if reared in 
confinement, becomes immediately domesticated, the young returning home at night 
with a regularity that has~given rise to the proverbial saying that “ Curses, like 
chickens, come home to roost.” 
Examples of the tameness of individual pheasants are not rare; to the 
fearless nature of a sitting hen I have already alluded. The males become even 
more familiar, and even at times aggressive; one of the most amusing examples 
was recorded some time since by a correspondent, who wrote as follows: “ Having 
recently been on a visit to a friend of mine living in Kent, I had an opportunity 
of there witnessing the effect of an extraordinary antipathy to crinoline exemplified 
