Introduction into Britain. 29 



" Erant autem tales pitantise unicmque canonioo : a festo Sancti 

 Miohaelis usque ad caput jejunii [Ash Wednesday] aut xii merute, aut ii 

 agauseae [Agace, a magpie (?), Ducange], aut ii perdices, aut unus phasianus, 

 reliquis temporibus aut ancae [Geese, Ducange] aut galliase. 



" Now the point of this passage is that it shows that 

 Phasiamis colchicus had become naturahsed in England before 

 the Norman invasion ; and as the EngHsh and Danes were not 

 the introducers of strange animals in any well authenticated 

 case, it offers fair presumptive evidence that it was intro- 

 duced by the Eoman conquerors, who naturalised the fallow 

 deer in Britain. 



" The eating of magpies at Waltham, though singular, 

 was not so remarkable as the eating of horse by the monks of 

 St. Galle in the time of Charles the Great and the returning 

 thanks to God for it : 



" Sit feralis equi caro dulcis sub cruce Christi ! 



The bird was not so unclean as the horse — the emblem of 

 paganism — was unholy." 



But the conclusion that the pheasant was introduced into 

 England before the Norman Conquest is not regarded as 

 proved by those authorities who consider the tract " De 

 inventione Crucis " as a miracle-mongering work that no 

 cautious antiquary would accept as conclusive evidence. 



In Dugdale's " Monasticon Anglicanum " is a reference 

 from which it appears that the Abbot of Amesbury obtained a 

 licence to kill hares and pheasants in the first years of the 

 reign of King Henry the First, which commenced on the 

 second of August, 1100 ; and Daniell, in his " Eural Sports," 

 quotes " Echard's History of England " to the effect that in 

 the year 1299 (the twenty-seventh of Edward I.) the price 

 of a pheasant was fourpence, a couple of woodcocks three- 

 halfpence, a mallard three-halfpence, and a plover one penny. 



" To these notices," writes the Eev. James Davis in the 

 Saturday Beview, " might have been added another which 

 seems to set the pheasant at a higher premium — to wit, 

 that in 1170 Thomas a Becket, on the day of his martyrdom. 



