92 PHEASANTS ADAPTED FOR THE COVERT. 



aljnormal plumage, showed a decided relationship to the Eing-necked cross, by 

 the white mark on either side of the neck" — a circumstance also noticed by 

 Macgillivray. 



A purely white variety of the common pheasant occasionally occurs in 

 the coverts without any apparent cause. A correspondent, who has been a 

 pheasant rearer for thirty years, writes : — " Pour years ago a nest of thirteen eggs 

 was brought in by the mowers. All the eggs were hatched; eleven were perfectly 

 white birds, the other two the common colour. Nine of the white birds were 

 reared — six cocks and three hens ; three cocks were turned out, the others were kept 

 in the pheasantry, pinioned. The white pheasants proved very bad layers — ^very 

 delicate, their eggs very bad ; and those that were hatched very difB.cult to rear, and 

 there never was a white bird bred. The extraordinary thing is, that where the nest 

 was taken up the keepers had never before or since seen a white 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 ' themselves, 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, and white, or even pied or parti-coloured birds 

 are not always to be produced from white parents, as the following letters wiQ 

 show :— r-" 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 kUled 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 was then confined with a common hen 

 pheasant, and there were a few of the chicks pied. Lastly, a pied cock and a pied 



