THE COMMON PHEASANT. 15T 



before or since seen a wliite pheasant. The three cocks 

 turned out never (to my knowledge or the keeper's) were the- 

 cause of white pheasants or pied pheasants being bred, and 

 the three all disappeared in the second year. On another 

 part of my estate a white cock pheasant was bred ; he was 

 considered a sacred bird, and lived seven years, when he 

 disappeared. In the covert he resorted to I killed one pied 

 pheasant, and I believe that one bird was the only pied 

 pheasant (if bred through him) that ever was seen." By 

 careful breeding there is no doubt that a permanent white- 

 race might be established if such a proceeding were thought 

 desirable, which I much doubt, as white varieties are 

 generally very deficient in hardihood. Left to them- 

 selves, the white cocks are doubtless driven away from 

 the hens by the stronger and more -vigorous dark birds, 

 and rarely increase their kind. When mated in pheasantries 

 the natural colour has a strong tendency to reproduce itself ; 

 but white, or even pied or parti-coloured birds, are not always 

 bo be produced from white parents, as the following letters 

 will show : — " On the manor of a friend in Yorkshire are a 

 cock and hen pheasant entirely and purely white. They 

 inhabit different woods, and are strenuously protected by the 

 head keeper, who considers their presence a proof of the- 

 integrity of his coverts, and invariably requests strangers to- 

 spare them. There are also a few ring-necks in the coverts, 

 which have bred so freely with the common sort that hardly 

 a cock pheasant is killed but shows some marks of white- 

 about his neck, while pied birds are so rare that the few 

 that have been shot have been preserved. If, then, white 

 pheasants breeding with ring-necks and other birds produced, 

 as a rule, pied birds, why should there not have been every 

 year at least one brood of pied pheasants in these woods in; 

 the same proportion as the half-bred ring-necks ? " Another 

 correspondent writes : — " A white hen was confined in the- 

 pheasantry here for some years with a common pheasant, but 

 of the progeny there was not one pied bird. A pied cock 



