334 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND 



though the late Jerry Smith remembered an abortive attempt to 

 colonise our hills with a batch of Scottish Ptarmigan. Mr. E. 

 Service has shewn that the Dumfries Courier of February 21, 

 1826, contains an unsigned statement as to domesticated 

 Ptarmigan, supposed to have been imported from Skiddaw to 

 Dumfries. This story is not only of uncertain authorship, but 

 is too wildly improbable to stand in need of serious refutation. 

 At this time, or within a very few years of the date of the 

 Dumfries story, T. C. Heysham was writing to a correspondent 

 at Perth, asking him to procure for him ' a brace or two of the 

 white grous ... in February or March, as well as some 

 of their eggs during the next summer.' If Ptarmigan had still 

 existed in Cumberland, Mr. Heysham would surely not have sent 

 for them to Perthshire 1 He always attached additional value 

 to Cumbrian specimens. 



Order GALLING. Fam. PHASIANIDuE. 



PHEASANT. 



Phadanus colchicus, L. 



When, in the year 1251, Henry III. decided to keep the Feast 

 of the Nativity at York, the Sheriffs of the northern counties were 

 ordered to contribute a supply of game and poultry for the use of 

 the sovereign. The Sheriff of Cumberland was required to deliver 

 a thousand Chickens, three hundred Partridges, twenty l cranes,' 

 fifteen Swans, twenty Peacocks, and forty Pheasants. 1 But, 

 whether this supply of Pheasants was actually forthcoming from 

 Cumberland I am quite unable to say. Indeed, the earliest 

 authority that we possess, favouring the supposition that the 

 Pheasant was early introduced, is that of Machell, who comments 

 on this game having become extinct in Westmorland : * The 

 species of them being soe tame a fowle are long since destroyd, 

 and, since the great forrests have bin depopulated of their wood 

 and verdure, so that there is little or none on the mountanes for 

 want of copses and covert, to fly too at severall stages, they 

 could never yet be restored agane.' If such an early introduc- 

 1 Documents relating to Scotland, vol. i. p. 338. 



