54 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PHEASANT 



species, and was therefore an undoubted hybrid. 

 This bird had been killed in the wild state.' 



Longolius, the author of a curious little book which 

 I have only seen in the Bodleian Library, entitled 

 ' Dialogus de Avibus,' published at Cologne in 1 544, 

 gives us curious and highly circumstantial directions as 

 to breeding cross-bred pheasants, an enterprise which 

 he describes as being very speculative but often profit- 

 able. The plan adopted by the pheasant breeder of 

 those days was to confine a single cock pheasant in a 

 room or pen ten feet long and the same in breadth. 

 The floor was covered with brushwood and dry earth. 

 All the small windows faced south, the light entering 

 chiefly from above. The pen was divided by a hurdle 

 of wicker-work, in which a space large enough to 

 admit the head and neck of a bird was left open. 

 The pheasant reigned supreme in one half of the 

 aviary. At the beginning of spring, the breeder 

 selected some common hens, known to be good 

 layers, and of similar colour to a hen pheasant. 

 These birds were then fed together for some days, but 

 their food was strewn in such a way that the cock 

 pheasant could devour his share of the food by cran- 

 ing his neck through the orifice left for that purpose 

 in the hurdle. The birds were kept apart thus at 

 ' Suchetet, Les Oiseaux Hybrides, p. 84. 



