24 NATUEAL HISTORY OP THE PHEASANTS. 



In Greece, the Hon. T. L. Powys, writing in The Ibis, informs us that "The 

 only localities in which I have seen pheasants in these parts were : once on the 

 Luro river, near Prevesa, in March, 1857, on which occasion I only saw one, the 

 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 inter- 

 sect the country in every direction. This species is particularly abundant on the 

 shores of the Gulf of Salonica, about the mouth of the river Vardar; 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 Mr. G. T. Vigne shot it in a wUd 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. 





