CHAP T V] II XI V 



PHEASANTS ADAPTED TO THE COVERT 

 (CONTINUED). 



KEKVES'S i'HEASANT {FIIASIANUS 

 REKVEHII.) 



i^P'IC AKCO POL(.), tlic old A'enetian tvavuller, who 

 _ a^^ l returned to Yeiiiee in 1298, after a residence 

 lv§f^ * *-'f seventeen years in Tartary, was evidently 

 ac(|uainted with the magnificent species now known 

 as Keeves's Pheasant. Jn the lauguao'e of his original 

 translator, whose c[uaint orthography I have followed, 

 he is made to state : " There Iji' plenty of Feysants and very 

 greate, for 1 of them is as big as 2 of ours, with ta.yles of 

 eight, 9 and tenne spannes long, from the Kingtlom of 

 Erguyl or Arguill, the \Y . side of Tartary." This descrip- 

 tion can be applicable imly to the species now under con- 

 sideration. From tliis time, until described by Latham and 

 Temminck, this l)ird was comparatively unknown, excejjt 

 from the inspection of Chinese drawings. Scmnini, whfi 

 ])receded Temminck, concludes his account by stating that it 

 is very ])ossible that the bird^ of which ho had merely seen 

 pictures, " exists only in the imagination of the Chinese 

 painters." 



Singularly enough, the species was, for thirteen years — 

 namely, 1808 to 1821 — -livmg in the aviary of Mr. Beale, at 

 Macao. \)i\ Bennett, in his '• W^anderiugs in New South 

 Wales," states : " In ilr. Beale's splendid riviary and garden 



