15 Pheasants. 



of pure strain, a pheasant which no crossing with the 

 three above-named kinds would improve. They will all 

 freely cross with either the above, torquatus, or versicolor, 

 and the crosses produce fertile offspring. They will do 

 this also amongst themselves ; but unless the preserver be 

 of a mind and possess the means and facility to keep and 

 to rear these pheasants separately as aviary birds and turn 

 them sponte sud into his coverts, there is otherwise nothing 

 to be gained by the proceeding. 



The Prince of Wales' Pheasant (P. -principalis) is a 

 species of not very recent introduction, and is one which 

 may with every advantage be employed by the all-round 

 preserver as an improvement upon, or addition to, his 

 ordinary stock. True that general success has not followed 

 its crossing with the ordinary breeds, but I put this down 

 to bad management or probably to the inferiority of the 

 birds with which it has sometimes been tried. It is a 

 handsome, hardy, quick-flying, true species, and ought in 

 good hands to prove an acquisition wherever tried; but 

 there are preserves where such an amount of indiscriminate 

 crossing of colchicus, torqiiatus, and versicolor has been 

 permitted, that nothing more than a race of mongrel birds 

 has been produced, incapable of improvement and insensible 

 to new influence. Amidst a stock of this kindred nothing 

 would exert a beneficial influence except the shot-gun, 

 freely applied. 



Probably at the present time we have nothing better in 

 the way of fresh type and fresh blood than the Mongolian 

 Pheasant (P. mongolicus). For really improving a stock 

 of ordinary pheasants which has degenerated alike in 

 stamp, stamina, and fertility, the Mongolian species may 

 be thoroughly relied upon. In connection with its intro- 

 duction preservers in general are fortunate enough to have 

 the experience of more than one large preserver as proof 



