DISTRIBUTION. 41 



March, 1857, on whicli occasion I only saw one, tlie bird 

 having never previously been met with in that part of the 

 country; and again in December of the same year, in the 

 forests near the mouth of the river Drin, in Albania, where it 

 is comparatively common, and where several fell to our guns. 

 In this latter locality, the pheasant's habitat seems to be 

 confined to a radius of from twenty to thirty miles to the 

 north, east, and south of the town of Alessio — a district for 

 the most part densely wooded and well watered, with 

 occasional tracts of cultivated ground, Indian corn being 

 apparently the principal produce, and forming, with the 

 berries of the privet (which abounds throughout Albania) the 

 chief food of the present species. We heard many more 

 pheasants than we saw, as the woods were thick and of great 

 extent, our dogs wild, and we lost a great deal of time in 

 making circuits to cross or avoid the numerous small but 

 deep streams which intersect the country in every direction. 

 This species is particularly abundant on the shores of the 

 Gulf of Salonica, about, the mouth of the river Yardarj and 

 I have been informed, on good authority, that pheasants are 

 also to be found in the woods of Vhrakori, in ^tolia, about 

 midway between the gulfs of Lepanto and Arta." With 

 regard to the present distribution of the species, Mr. Gould, 

 in his " Birds of Asia," states that the late Nr. G. T. Vigne 

 shot it in a wild state at the Lake of Apollonia, thirty -five miles 

 from Broussa, to the south of the sea of Marmora, and that 

 the late Mr. Atkinson found it on the Kezzil-a-Gatch and the 

 country to the west of the river Ilia. Mr. C. G. Danford, in 

 his notes on the ornithology of Asia Minor, writes : " The 

 English Consul, Mr. Gilbertson, informed us that pheasants, 

 though generally becoming scarce, were still common near Lake 

 Apollonia, where a couple of guns had last year killed over 

 sixty head in two or three days' shooting.'' {Ibis, 1880, p. 98.) 

 LordLilford, writing in 1895, states: "The only country 

 in which we have personally met with it in an unpreserved 

 and perfectly wild state is on the shores of the Adriatic, near 



