174 The Common Pheasant. 



(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 mv 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 beheve' 

 that one bird was the only pied pheasant (if bred through him) 

 that ever was seen." 



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 ; but white, or even pied or parti-coloured 

 birds, are not always to be produced from white parents, as 

 the following letters will show : — " 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 killed 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 i:)ied hen 

 were confined together, and invariably every one of the chicks 

 was pied. I have tried the experiment frequently with the 

 same results," And a third states : — ■" I denv that the cross 



