G. H. Edwards—Pheasants



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of possibly one or two distinct members—the stock from which the

species branched out. This is no strictly ornithological treatise, but is

simply what appears to me to be, prima facie, a reasonable connecting

up of the Pheasant tribe.



From one Stock


I assume that the Pheasant group sprang from the same beginning,

as they are confined to Asia, and there does not appear to be any



evidence that they ever existed in the New World. It is probable

that the Pheasants proper were restricted to Asia in the region of the

Caspian Sea millions of years ago, and that their range extended later

to the British Isles, and also that there was a wholesale migration

eastwards. Phasianus colchicus which I think was the original stock

from which the varieties of the species Phasianus colchicus and

Phasianus collectively evolved, in those early days spread in bands

and occupied lands from England, across the Channel (then marsh¬

land) and on through France, the Caucasus, across to Mongolia, China,



