on the Eared Pheasant of Manchuria. 291


the Common Pheasant was introduced into England and France, and

though it has been reared in close contact with man, Waterton’s

saying still holds good: “ That notwithstanding the proximity of

the Pheasant to the nature of barn-door fowl, it has that within it

which baffles every attempt on our part to render its domestication

complete.”


The character of the Eared Pheasants of Manchuria is still

more puzzling. They seem to prefer human society to that of their

congeners. They will find, as soon as hatched, the door of the kitchen

or the servants’ hall, and there they will linger the whole day long,

hardly moving out of the way of a passer-by. They never think of

straying far, and keep on the best terms w T ith the poultry; but, all of

a sudden, they are apt to start from their placid composure, and,

without any explanatory cause, assault one of the inmates of the

house, rush after somebody they see passing in the distance, or fall

upon a fowd, which is soon put to death if timely help is not forth¬

coming. These fits of mad rage have prevented me from keeping the

Eared Pheasants loose, as I did at first, and I have been obliged to

confine them in a closed aviary by themselves. But more than a pair

cannot be kept together, and even then their courting is so brutal

that the deluded spouse may find that she has caught a Tartar and

have to be removed in a pitiful plight, often beyond recovery. No

wonder that the ancient Chinese warriors decorated their helmets

with the plumes of the Eared Pheasant as a token of their own

pugnacity. The courage of the bird is such that I have seen one

•driving away a cat that was trying to stalk it in the grass.


The Eared Pheasant was introduced into Europe in the

sixties. In 1864 Mr. Berthemy, the French Minister in China, sent

two males and one female to the Acclimatization Society. In 1866.

Mr. Dudley E. Saurin presented some specimens to the Zoological

Society of London, and the same year Mademoiselle de Bellonet

succeeded in raising eighteen birds from a pair which had been sent

to her by her brother, the Secretary of the French Legation at Pekin.

The bird is now well known, as it has spread in zoological gardens

and private collections, and I daresay that it is not necessary to

observe that its so-called ears are no ears at all, but two tufts of white

feathers, which, upturned in the way of a moustache, encircle the


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