134 LIMITS OF GALLING. 



over many miles as when they are kept at home and 

 fed by the hand. The pheasants, on the other hand, 

 cannot endure even their natural powers to increase 

 beyond a certain limit ; for (as was not many years 

 ago proved at Wanstead, in Essex) if they are 

 allowed, even in the most favourable preserve, to in- 

 crease beyond a certain limit, epizooty falls on them, 

 and they die by the score, not of hunger or any other 

 perceptible cause, for they die in good condition, and 

 the mortality continues till their numbers are reduced 

 considerably below what would be left by a judicious 

 sportsman. 



Our native gallinidas have not, perhaps, been so 

 carefully studied ; but there are well authenticated 

 instances in which excessive preservation has been 

 followed by, if it has not actually produced, epizooty, 

 both in the mountaineers and the inhabitants of the 

 plains. If such were the case only with pheasants, 

 their foreign origin, and the many mild climates of 

 which they are natives, might be alleged as the cause ; 

 but as the ptarmigan is the highest dweller of all our 

 native birds, and the grouse live in more bleak places 

 than the pigeon, and as they are subject to the 

 casualty from which pigeons are exempted, we must 

 conclude that the whole of the gallinaceous tribes, of 

 which these are the most hardy, are physiologically 

 different from the pigeons, and tempered to the ele- 

 ments in a very different degree. Taken alone, this 

 would be a good argument against uniting the two in 

 the same order ; but when taken along with the 

 structural, and even the textural differences of the 

 birds, and the differences of all their actions and 

 habits, it becomes irresistibly conclusive ; and galli- 

 nidae and columbadae should unquestionably form se- 

 parate orders in any system pretending to be natural. 



