PHEASANT. 449 



has been found at a considerable beiglit from the ground, in an old squirrel's 

 drey or on the top of a wood- or hay-stack. It is a very simple structure, 

 a slight hollow lined with a few leaves and bits of herbage. In this the 

 female lays from eight to twelve eggs, though in some cases as many as 

 sixteen or twenty are found; and Dixon has known a single bird hatch 

 safely twenty-six eggs. They are generally brown or olive-brown, but 

 many examples are bluish green, and one in my collection, taken in North- 

 umberland from a clutch of the usual colour, is a delicate greenish blue, 

 almost the colour of a Starling's egg ; they are always unspotted : the 

 shell is smooth and rather polished, but full of minute pits. They vary in 

 length from 1"9 to 1-75 inch, and in breadth from 1'45 to 1-35 inch. 

 They usually resemble the eggs of the Partridge in colour, but are readily 

 distinguished by their larger size. Bittern's eggs are the same colour as 

 typical eggs of the Pheasant, but they are much larger. 



Only one brood is reared in the season, but birds have been found sitting 

 as late as the beginning of September. When the old bird leaves her eggs 

 to search for food, which she does invariably in early morning and late in 

 the evening, she covers them carefully with leaves. When leaving her 

 nest she is very wary and cunning, always flying from it and returning 

 in the same manner, leaving no' track that might be followed up by an 

 enemy. When the young are hatched the hen leads them and shelters 

 them in the same manner that a domestic fowl tends her brood. The 

 young birds advance to maturity<rather slowly, and are seldom well able 

 to fly before the end of July, sometimes much later, according to the time 

 they were hatched. The female and her brood often keep together in a 

 family party until the following spring. 



The Pheasant will sometimes pair with other species of game birds, and 

 hybrids are occasionally produced between it and the Domestic Fowl, the 

 Black Grouse, and the Guinea-fowl; but all or most of these are said to 

 be barren. With many of the allied species the Common Pheasant pro- 

 duces fertile crosses. 



The brilliant cock Pheasant (with his conspicuous ear-tufts and scarlet 

 wattles, the metallic green and purple of his head and neck, and the 

 mixture of gold or copper with black or buflf of a considerable part of the 

 rest of his plumage) and the comparatively sombre-coloured hen (with her 

 alternations of buif, dull chestnut, and black) are too well known to need 

 detailed description. Young cocks resemble hens in colour, T)ut attain 

 an almost adult plumage at their first autumn moult. 



The hen Pheasant sometimes assumes the plumage of the cock, probably 

 old birds, or birds that are barren through defects in their organs of repro- 

 duction. The Pheasant is subject to considerable variation in plumage, 

 every variety being known from pure white to the normal colour. 



Most of the Pheasants now found in our islands are crosses between the 



VOL. II. 2 G 



