THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
Introduction into the British Isles. — The pheasant was almost certainly 
Introduced into England by the Romans, for the first certain record of its 
existence there is to be found in ancient manuscript regulations drawn 
up by King Harold in A.D. 1059, and preserved in the British Museum. 
These allowed the canons of Waltham Abbey one pheasant as an alter- 
native fare to a brace of partridges, etc. The date of its introduction into 
Ireland is unknown, but it was said to be plentiful there in 1589. The 
earliest mention of its existence in Scotland is in old Scots Acts dated 
June 8, 1594, in which King James prohibited the slaying of pheasants, etc., 
and ordained that any person found guilty of doing so should pay a fine of 
one hundred pounds.* 
The pheasant has long been acclimatized in most parts of Europe, with 
the exception of the higher latitudes of Scandinavia and Russia, but at 
what date, and how it was first imported to these countries there is now 
no means of finding out. Macpherson is of opinion that it was probably 
brought to France by Roman officers employed on foreign service about 
the same period that it was introduced into England. Its establishment 
in Spain and Portugal has only recently been accomplished, early efforts 
having proved entirely futile. 
It is interesting to note that remains of several species of pheasant -like 
birds, which have been referred to the genus Phasianus, have been found 
in the lower Pliocene and upper and middle Miocene deposits of France, 
Switzerland, Germany, and Greece, and if these remains have been 
correctly referred to Phasianus^ the range of that genus must at one 
time have extended over the greater part of Europe. Towards the end of 
the eighteenth century the ring-necked pheasant from South China, P. 
torquatus (renamed P. gmelini by Buturlin), began to be imported into 
England, and interbred freely with the common pheasant, gradually 
producing the perfectly fertile race of hybrids generally met with in these 
islands at the present time. One rarely now meets with a pure bred male 
of P. colchicus among the enormous numbers of pheasants killed in this 
country ; even in specimens which appear at the first glance to be pure 
bred (that is in those which have no trace of a white ring), the subterminal 
green bar of the ring -necked pheasant is usually more or less developed 
on the feathers of the lower back, and the basal part of the middle tail- 
feathers is rather widely barred with black. During recent years numbers 
of pure bred P. colchicus have been imported from Transcaucasia to 
* That is one hundred pounds Scots=£8 6s. 8d., the Scots pound being equivalent to Is. 8d. — Ed. 
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