243 The Silver Pheasant. 



plumage ; the others are hens. In bad weather and in winter 

 they roost in the poultry house, at other times in the trees. 

 The males are most pugnacious and jealous, fighting and 

 bullying the fowls — so much so that I am obliged to have 

 their spurs cut off — and the hens very spiteful to young 

 poultry. The others I have shut up, otherwise they would 

 fight until they killed each other. In the breeding time 

 they are shut up in large pens. 



" I have frequently had the hens sit on and hatch their 

 eggs ; when they have young ones, if anyone goes near them 

 they act like partridges. I have seen them charge dogs and 

 drive them away. I have also seen a cock watching a fox 

 stalking him, and when the fox made his rush the bird flew 

 over him, but lost his tail. To show how severely they can 

 make these spurs tell, one of my keepers kicked at an old 

 Silver cock pheasant to drive him away, when the bird turned 

 on him and sent his spur right through his boot. They are 

 quite as bad as peafowls in a kitchen garden ; they will eat 

 all the fruit. They are not very good birds for the table, 

 but they are useful as being eatable in February and March." 



The Silver Pheasant is a long-hved bird, even in confine- 

 ment. Mr. Thompson, in his " Natural History of Ireland," 

 states that he has known one live twenty-one or twenty-two 

 years in captivity. 



The male, without possessing the gorgeous coloration of 

 many of the Phasianidce, is a very beautiful bird. The face 

 is entirely covered with a bright vermilion skin, which during 

 the spring becomes excessively brilliant, and is greatly increased 

 in size, so as to almost resemble the comb and wattles of a 

 cock ; the flowing crest is blue-black, the bill hght green. 

 The upper part of the body is white, pencilled with the most 

 deUcate tracery of black. The whole of the under parts are 

 bluish-black, the legs and feet red, the spurs well developed 

 and usually very sharp. The female is smaller than the male ; 

 her general colour is brown, mottled with a darker tint ; the 

 crest and tail are much less ample than those of the cock ; 



