THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
shire, and other similar Highland lochs, are always sure to contain a 
number of birds which have wandered there from the neighbouring woods, 
and they may often be seen rising with duck and snipe. 
The closely allied Prince of Wales’s pheasant (P. principalis)^ inhabiting 
the Murghab Valley in Afghanistan and Turkestan, lives in the tamarisk 
and grass -jungle growing in the bed of the river. It not only wades through 
the water in moving from one place to another, but swims, and is perfectly 
at home in thickets where there is always water to a depth of two or three 
feet. In the morning and evening the birds leave their dense shelter for 
the more open and dry country, where they pick up their food. That our 
mongrel pheasants in this country can not only swim, but dive, is well 
known, for shot birds that drop in water, unless mortally wounded, will 
at once start swimming for the nearest land, and will often cause the 
dogs sent in to retrieve them some trouble by diving before they are 
captured. When swimming, they look like water-hens resting lightly on 
the water with most of the body exposed, and with their tails held high. 
Hybrids. — ^The pheasant crosses freely with other species of its own 
kind, and the hybrids are, so far as we know, perfectly fertile. All the 
species of Phasianus : P. torquatus, P. versicolor ^ P. principalis^ and P. turces- 
tanicus which have been introduced into our coverts have interbred with 
P. colchicus and there is every reason to believe that any two species will 
produce fertile offspring, that the hybrids will mate with other hybrids, or 
with pure -bred birds of another species ad infinitum. For this reason 
as above mentioned some naturalists hold that all the true pheasants 
are merely local varieties or sub-species of one form, but such a view 
appears to me to be an entirely wrong one. It is absurd to regard the 
Chinese ring-necked pheasant, P. torquatus^ from Southern China, or the 
green-breasted, P. versicolor., which is only found in Japan, as sub-species 
of P. colchicus, because the birds, when artificially brought together in the 
same pens or woods pair with one another and produce fertile hybrids. 
No ornithologist regards the pintail, the gadwall and the wigeon as sub- 
species of the mallard, they are even considered by most naturalists as 
representing different genera, yet we know that in a semi -domestic 
state (and occasionally also in a wild state), they not only pair together, 
but produce perfectly fertile races which can be interbred to any extent. 
Why, then, should we not regard all the species of ducks mentioned above 
and many other allied forms found in different parts of the world as sub- 
species of the mallard ? It would be just as sensible and as near the truth. 
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