Chirps and 
Chatter. 
(215) 
THE BIRD WORLD. 
A Disappearing Game Bird. 
It will be news to many that the 
Pheasant, as it is seen in our poulterers’ 
shops, is hardly the true Britisher that 
he is supposed to be. Ever since the 
introduction of the Chinese, or ring¬ 
necked Pheasant, towards the end of 
the eighteenth century, the old English 
Pheasant has been steadily disappear¬ 
ing from our ken. One can scarcely 
say that the bird has been driven out by 
the newcomer ; but its characteristics 
have been lost to us by repeated union 
with that prolific and pertinacious 
species. It is now a hard matter to find 
pure specimens of the old British 
Pheasant in any part of the kingdom. 
It is true that Phasianus Colchicus is 
often imported from Eastern Europe 
and turned down in this country, and 
that, in consequence, Pheasants without 
the distinguishing white neck-ring of Tor- 
quatus are occasionally shot. It is a mel¬ 
ancholy reflection that the pristine purity } 
not only of the Pheasant’s ancestry, but 
of other members of our ancient fauna, 
is being thus destroyed. The Hungarian 
Partridge is steadily being merged with 
our English bird, and for years Con¬ 
tinental foxes have been systematically 
provided with homes and abiding-places 
in our coverts, and have mingled their 
blood with that of the tough and free- 
running British fox. Whether these 
unions are beneficial may well be 
doubted; to the sentimentalist the whole 
business is deplorable. 
In Days of Old. 
Palaeontologists have discovered the 
remains of Pheasants in the Pliocene 
beds of Pikermi, and in Miocene 
deposits at CEningen and Allier, and it 
has therefore been contended that these 
birds were anciently indigenous in 
Europe, and even in Britain. The more 
commonly-accepted theory is that the 
old English Pheasant was introduced 
into this country by the Romans. In 
the excavations at Silchester, the site of 
the old Roman-British town of Calleva 
(Caer Segeint of the British), bird 
bones, some of which have been identi¬ 
fied as those of the Pheasant, have been 
discovered during the last few years. 
Earliest Available Evidence. 
This seems to be the earliest available 
evidence of the presence of these birds 
in England in pre-Saxon times. In 
Saxon times the Pheasant was certainly 
well known and established in Britain. 
Harold, the last of the Saxon kings, 
laid down in 1059 a table of dietary for 
Canons’ households of from six to seven 
persons. This table is preserved in a 
MS. bearing date 1177. “Such were 
the allowances to each Canon,” says an 
extract, “ from Michaelmas Day to the 
beginning of the fast, Ash Wednesday. 
Either 12 Blackbirds, or Magpies, or 
two Partridges, or one Pheasant, at other 
times either Geese or two Fowls.” In 
1100 the Abbot of Amesbury obtained a 
licence to kill Pheasants. In Edward 
I.’s time these birds sold at 8d. a brace, 
a great figure, if we compare the value 
of money at that time with the present. 
High Prices Prevalent. 
Pheasants in Norman and Plantagenet 
times were apparently not too plentiful, 
and a high value was placed upon them. 
In 1245, f° r example, the Custos 
(master of game) of the Bishopric of 
Chichester was ordered to send to the 
King, for his use at Easter, among 
game, twenty-four Pheasants. These 
old kings would surely have held up 
their hands in astonishment if they could 
have beheld the present plethora of 
these birds. But one can have little doubt 
that the Pheasants of their days were 
far better eating than the maize-fattened 
product (one can call it by no other 
word) of the present time. Those people 
who have the good fortune to eat an 
occasional wild-bred Pheasant at the 
present time well know the difference 
between such a bird as an article of food 
and the hand-reared Pheasant. It is as 
great as that between a genuine farm¬ 
yard fowl and the tasteless poultry so 
largely stuffed and fattened under un¬ 
healthy conditions in Surrey and Sussex. 
In this, as in many other ways, the work 
of Nature is far superior to that of man, 
the wild seeds and grasses which the 
birds obtain giving the peculiar gamey 
flavour so much appreciated. 
