64 



RETROSPECTIVE REMARKS. 



qualities, and requiring less trouble and expense, into the parks, &c. of 

 John Bull, who is not easily to be induced to divest himself of his vulgar 

 and erroneous prejudices against rearing and eating what he terms 

 " curosities." In the very elegant work entitled " The Gardens of 

 the Zoological Society delineated," published under the superintendence 

 of the secretary and vice-secretary, are many hints upon the manage- 

 ment of poultry. Speaking of the golden pheasant (Phasianus jnctus), 

 they remark, that it requires no small degree of care and attention to 

 procure a breed from this species, and inform us " that much of the 

 difficulty, as well as of the tenderness of constitution manifested by 

 these birds, is attributed by M. Temminck to the close confinement in 

 which they are usually kept, and to the very precautions which are 

 taken to preserve them from the effects of cold." He advises that they 

 should be gradually habituated, like the more common race, to the 

 large pheasantries in which the latter are preserved, and doubts not, 

 that, as they multiplied under such circumstances, they would become 

 more and more hardy, until at last they would be fully capable of 

 supporting the cold of our northern winters. The experiment, he tells 

 us, has already been made in Germany, where they have been kept at 

 perfect liberty in an open pheasantry, in company with the common 

 species, and suffered no greater inconvenience than the latter from the 

 change of seasons. We anticipate an equally favourable result from 

 the repetition, under the auspices of the Zoological Society, of this 

 attempt to naturalise so brilliant an addition to our native game. Such 

 an experiment could not have been made with any success in the 

 gardens in the Regent's Park ; but the farm in the neighbourhood of 

 Kingston, of which the Society has lately become possessed, affords the 

 fairest prospect of carrying this and many similar undertakings into 

 complete effect*." The silver pheasant (Phasia?ius nycthemerus) they 

 say, thrives " better in domestication than the common pheasant of our 

 woods, and breeds with tolerable facility ; so that it might, in all 

 probability, be readily propagated in the open country. We believe 

 that this has, in some instances, been attempted with successf.'' 

 Respecting the introduction of curassows, the editors of the work from 

 which these extracts are taken, tell us that they have no doubt that 

 the crested curassow (Crate alector) with proper treatment would 

 speedily become habituated to the climate of our country, and that 

 " numerous examples have shown that they thrive well even in its 



Zool. Soc. Gardens, vol. ii. p. 62. 



f Idem, p. Gi. 



