Correspondence



93



agrees with Mr. Butler’s. I grant that, until fully acclimatized, they are certainly

very delicate but, once established, I have found them not only very prolific,

but quite as hardy as any other small Australian hardbills. Though I have

never attempted to winter them out of doors, I have kept them in perfect

health and feather all the year round in an inside aviary where heat was

only used in extremely cold weather, and, under those conditions, and fed

on the ordinary menu provided for a mixed collection of foreign hardbills,

they never showed any signs of ailing. Their prolificacy may be gathered

from the fact that, last season, one pair produced and reared to full maturity

eight strong youngsters. These were reared without any live insect food,

beyond an occasional mealworm, and never gave me the least trouble or

anxiety.


J. E. Sweetnam.


BREEDING OE THE CHEER PHEASANT

Catreus wallichii (Hardw.)


In P.Z.S., 1858, both the egg and chick of the Cheer Pheasant are figured,

the latter hatched in the Gardens. In the account it is not very clear how

the chicks were hatched or even if they were reared, but the article is headed

“ On the Indian Pheasants bred in the Menagerie ”, And Beebe in his

Monograph of the Pheasants, vol. iii, p. 63, confirms that it laid eggs and

reared its young in the London Zoological Gardens in 1858. Gould, Birds

of Asia, vol. vii, also states that the present bird bred in the Gardens of the

Zoological Society, at Viscount Hill’s, at Hawkstone, and at Earl Craven’s,

at Ashdown ; Lord Craven also obtained a cross between this bird and the

common Pheasant. So it seems to have been reared a number of times in

England during the nineteenth century. I notice that Elliot also figures

the newly-hatched young. Mr. Stallard does not tell us how his birds were

hatched, did the parent bird sit and hatch and rear its young or were the

eggs placed under domestic hens or other means employed ? Is it not an

understood rule that young must be reared by their own parents in order to

be entitled to the Society’s Medal ?


T. H. Newman.


[According to the Zoological Society’s Vertebrate List, eighth edition, the

Cheer Pheasant was bred in the Gardens in 1862, 1863, 1865, 1866, 1867,

1868, and 1881.—D. S-S.]



THE DANGER OF PHEASANTS


I was much interested in Mr. J. Spedan Lewis’s letter on the occasional

danger of keeping Pheasants in small birds’ aviaries. Although they nearly ;

always are harmless, there are a few cases where they prove decidedly

impossible. It is all a question of species, of individuals as well. In my

own experience, only one species, the Cheer, is really dangerous; they

deliberately catch and eat small birds. Last summer at Cleres, a pair of

Cheers shared an aviary with a large collection of Waxbills, whose numbers

were unaccountably decreasing. We thought that they were escaping through

some hole in the wire netting, which, of course, we could never discover, till

one day, we saw both cock and hen Cheer seize and devour three or four

Waxbills before our eyes.



