38 Distribution. 



has been successfully made by Baron Oscar Dickson, who, 

 in 1873, reared seven or eight hundred birds. These did well, 

 for in the Morgenblad of November 10, 1877, it is recorded 

 that " Mr. (now Baron) Oscar Dickson and party shot in one 

 day, on his property, Bokedal, in Sweden, ninety pheasants, 

 one deer, one hare, and one woodcock. There were five 

 guns." And the same journal mentions that a brace of 

 pheasants lived at full liberty on an estate in the neighbour- 

 hood of Christiania during the winter of 1876-7 without being 

 fed or taken care of, and that in the summer of 1877 thej^ 

 reared four full-grown young ones. A brace more were let 

 loose early in the spring of the same year, and also hatched 

 and reared in the open. The first brace escaped from a pen 

 and nobody knew what had become of them. It was supposed 

 that they were either frozen to death during the severe winter, 

 had died of starvation, or had fallen an easy prey to foxes, 

 cats, or hawks. But they survived, and found both shelter 

 and food for themselves. Since that date they increased 

 rapidh', and on November 14 and 15, 1893, the Crown Prince 

 shot over the Baron's preserves on the Island Wisingso, in the 

 Wetter Lakes, when 1548 pheasants were killed by six 

 guns. 



In New Zealand, the Great Britain of the southern 

 hemisphere, the introduction of the pheasant has been a 

 great success ; so much so that in a single season, that of 1871, 

 six thousand birds were bagged in the immediate neighbour- 

 hood of the city of Auckland. Pheasants were first introduced 

 into the province of Auckland about thirty years since, seven 

 males and two females, the only survivors of two dozen 

 shipped in China, comprising the original stock of the 

 Chinese species. At the same time a number of the Common 

 species were liberated in another part of the colony. These 

 were supplemented by six more Chinese birds in 1856. Both 

 species have multiplied exceedingly, but their multiplication 

 has in many places been lessened by the employment of 

 phosphorised oats laid down to poison the rabbits. 



