j6 The Natural History of British Game Birds 
which Mr. Elliot regards as the same as P. shawi ; and P. chrysomelas, which he regards as 
identical with P. insignis. In the following volume (1888) Mr. Seebohm enumerates seven races, 
of which the Chinese P. lorquaius may be regarded as the type ; of these two, P. vlangali and 
P. strauchi, are not described by Elliot. Of the others, the most strongly marked is the Japanese 
P. versicolor, which appears to me to be the most distinct and typical of all the true pheasants." 1 
In Game Birds Mr. Ogilvie Grant enumerates eighteen species, and to these have 
been added three others by Mr. Dresser and the Hon. Walter Rothschild — namely, 
Ijima's Pheasant, P. ijimce (Dresser) ; Berezowsky's Pheasant, P. berezowskyi ; and 
Hagenbeck's Pheasant, P. hagenbecki (Rothschild). 
It is quite possible that zoologists will never agree as to what actually constitutes 
a species and a sub-species. I have listened to and taken part in discussions with 
our best ornithologists on this point, and the result is ever the same. Like Omar 
Khayyam, we always come out by the same door as we go in. There are no uniform 
conclusions. Personally, I think that a bird or mammal is only entitled to specific 
rank when two distinct types overlap or are found in the same area, and do not inter- 
breed. Where a local form of bird, owing to slightly different environment, varies in 
colour and size to some small degree, and does or would, if placed together with the 
parent race, breed freely and produce fertile crosses, these local forms are merely 
sub-specific races. Mr. Grant argues that numbers of the black-necked races of the 
True Pheasants have partial white rings on the neck, and that this variation is constant 
in what he calls isolated species. But the answer to this is that the geographical 
range of most of these so-called species is at present undetermined, and I maintain 
that he does not know for certain that these black-necked races are not in touch with 
white-necked ones at the present time, or have not been so recently.' - ' Travellers in 
the interior of China have found that between the Yangtze and Western Szechuen a 
day's shooting in one place will produce Pheasants of several of the so-called species, 
ranging from true torqiiatns type, with the broad white ring, to the dark ringless race. 
We know how freely all the local races will breed if allowed to run wild in our 
occurs islands, and the same thing applies to Asia in a broad sense, wherever contact 
by means of river systems. 
THE COMMON PHEASANT 
Phasianus colchicus, Linnaeus 
Local Names.— The old English Pheasant, Black-necked Pheasant, Ceiliog y Goed (Cock of the 
wood), Iar Goed (Wood-hen), Ffesant (Welsh); Easag (Gaelic). 
Adult Male. — Bill, pale greenish yellow; iris, yellow; bare papillar patch, scarlet; 
crown, bronze-green ; head and neck, dark green, shading to purple on sides and front 
of neck. Mantle, chest, breast, and flanks, orange-red, edged with black bars and 
hoops suffused on the mantle with purplish green, and on the other parts with bright 
purple. Scapulars, rich orange-red, with a slight purple bloom, each feather in the 
1 Bull., B.O. Club, Nov. 29, 1907. 2 By recently I mean to infer some hundreds of years. 
