CHAPTER XIV. 
PHEASANTS ADAPTED FOR THE COVERT (CONTINUED). 
REEVES’S PHEASANT (PHASIANUS 
REEVESI1). 
oy \ 
AO " ARCO POLO, the old Venetian traveller, who returned to 
Venice in 1298, after a residence of seventeen years in 
Tartary, was evidently acquainted with the magnificent species, 
now known as Reeves’s Pheasant. In the language of his 
\ original translator, whose quaint orthography I have followed, 
F r ae he is made to state, “There be plenty of Feysants and very greate 
: De & for 1 of them is as big as 2 of ours, with tayles of eyght, 9 and 
\ tenne spannes long, from the Kingdom of Erguyl or Arguill, 
Mee the W. Side of Tartary.” This description can only be applicable 
to the species now under consideration. From this time, until described by Latham 
and Temminck, this bird was comparatively unknown, except from the inspection 
of Chinese drawings. Sonnini, who preceded Temminck, concludes his account by 
stating that it is very possible that the bird, of which he had merely seen pictures, 
‘exists only in the imagination of the Chinese painters.” Singularly enough the 
species was, for thirteen years, namely, from 1808 to 1821, living in the aviary of 
Mr. Beale, at Macao. Dr. Bennett, in his “ Wanderings in New South Wales,” 
states, “In Mr. Beale’s splendid aviary and garden, at Macao, the beautiful 
Phasianus veneratus of Temminck, the P. reevesii of Gray, now commonly known 
by the name of the Reeves’s Pheasant, was seen. It is the Chee-hai of the 
Chinese. 
“The longest tail feathers of the bird are 6ft. in length, and are placed in the 
caps of the players when acting military characters. This I observed at Canton. 
where some of the beautiful tail feathers (rather in a dirty condition, like the actors 
themselves, who in their tawdry dresses, reminded me of the chimney-sweepers in 
London on a May-day) were placed erect on each side of their caps as a decoration. 
“The Chinese do not venerate this bird, as was first supposed, and which 
may have caused Temminck to bestow on it the name of veneratus; but it is 
