NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PHEASANT 



me that Martial was correctly informed when he wrote 

 the well-known couplet, 



Argiva primiim sum transportata carina ; 

 Ante mihi notum nil nisi Phasis erat. ' 



The popularity which the pheasant enjoyed as an 

 article of luxury passed into a proverb : ' Not if you 

 would give me the pheasants which Leogoras rears.' 

 Ptolemseus Euergetes, in describing the animals kept 

 at the palace in Alexandria, took occasion to remark 

 upon the tasty character of the flesh of the pheasant. 

 During the later years of the Empire, Roman epicures 

 vied with one another in the variety and costliness of 

 their banquets, which were furnished with pheasants 

 reared by contractors or supplied by their own country 

 estates. Nor were the barbarians of the North slow 

 to appreciate the good judgment of classical taste on 

 the score of a roast pheasant. Alexander Neckam 

 has worthily celebrated the esteem which the pheasant 

 enjoyed in Britain during the reign of his foster- 

 brother, Richard Coeur-de-Lion. I venture to think 

 that his lines deserve to be better known than they 



In prima specie carnem quod judice luxu 

 Judical, ijDse sapor phasidos ales habet. 



Deliciosus honos mensse, jocunda palati 

 Gloria, vix stomacho gratior hospes adest.^ 



t^ib. xiii. Epig. Ixxii. 



De Laudibus Diviiia: Sixfientice, p. 383, 



