THE POULTRY BOOK. 
1G5 
birds produced ; and insist that the repetition of the cross at intervals is actually 
needful, to perpetuate this beautiful marking of feather. However dogmatically 
such an assertion may be enforced, it is, without doubt, the most egregious 
nonsense that was ever attempted to be palmed on the public; and evidently 
in not a few instances is practised on the unwary simply to secure a sale for birds 
at enhanced prices, and of course at sums far beyond their real value, as varieties 
of the domestic fowl. 
“ That the common wild pheasant will breed occasionally with the domestic 
fowl, and that too of almost any variety, I unhesitatingly admit ; but although I 
have for years made the closest investigation in all such cases as came under my 
notice, I never, most certainly, met with even one solitary, one isolated instance, 
where a hybrid was produced if the pheasant had been wild bred and still 
retained unlimited freedom. To obtain so unnatural a product, I have always 
found it altogether indispensable for the pheasant itself to have been previously 
hatched and reared beneath a common fowl. If afterwards restored to comparative 
liberty, I have then known the pheasant so released to still associate with the 
poultry, and actually produce hybrids with a domestic fowl ; but even in this case, 
the partiality has been confined to some particular favourite, and the pheasant has 
certainly not lavished his attentions equally on all. But even these instances are 
exceedingly rare ones ; and the half-bred offspring is only to be attained, as a rule, 
by close confinement of the pheasant with its allotted mate, either directly in an 
aviary, or some very restricted premises of a like nature. Here difficulties still 
surround the fancier who attempts their procreation, for but few of the eggs will 
usually prove fertilized; and that, too, however fond and salacious the pheasant 
may appear to be, or however carefully its owner may have guarded against the 
male bird’s access to females of its own race — for the introduction of even a single 
hen pheasant will commonly estrange all feelings of affection from the common 
fowls. The results desired are rendered far more probable, as may be supposed, by 
confining the attentions of the pheasant to one solitary female of the variety of 
domesticated poultry that may have been arranged. It is also certain, that 
pheasants are most capricious in their attachments, and that with some hens they 
will not associate under any circumstances whatever, though constantly abiding* 
with them in apparent good-fellowship. Again, not unfrequently, from some 
inexplicable cause or other, they seem to entertain the most determined aversion to 
the mate selected for them by their proprietor ; and certain it is that, in this case, 
no artifice will produce anything even approaching to reconciliation. In such an 
exigency, the old school axiom, that ‘ perseverance commands success,’ is thrown 
overboard altogether ; and the sooner a change takes place, the greater probability 
will there be of a successful issue. I will now very briefly describe the results 
obtained by crossing the cock pheasant with hens of the five following varieties, 
namely, Spanish, Game, Buff Bantam, Golden-spangled and Silver-spangled. All 
the five hybrids possessed the following general characteristics : — Extraordinary 
wildness ; heads altogether devoid of either comb, wattles, or deaf-ear ; tails very 
