THE PHEASANT IN HISTORY 13 



both that country and England through the agency 

 of Roman officers employed upon foreign service. 

 French ornithologists show much remissness in ac- 

 quainting us with the distribution of their native birds ; 

 but M. Diguet states that the departments in which 

 the pheasant is most numerous are those of the Seine- 

 and-Marne, Seine-and-Oise, and of the Oise. He 

 adds that the pheasant exists in a perfectly wild state 

 in Touraine and Sologne.' 



Such eiforts as have been made to establish 

 the pheasant in Spain have proved, I understand, 

 entirely futile. The case is very different with regard 

 to Great Britain. Even here the earliest documen- 

 tary evidence of the naturalisation of this bird is late, 

 dating only from the eleventh century. The infor- 

 mation in question was brought to light by the Bishop 

 of Oxford, who discovered that the regulations of 

 King Harold in the year 1059 allowed the canons of 

 Waltham Abbey a ' commons ' pheasant as the agree- 

 able alternative to a brace of partridges. Dugdale's 

 ' Monasticon ' is often quoted in support of a state- 

 ment that Henry I. granted the Abbot of Amesbury 

 a licence to kill pheasants in the year 11 00. The 

 ' Saturday Review ' states that Thomas Becket dined 

 off a pheasant on the day he died, December 29 



' Le Livre du Chasseur, p. 64. 



